The wings of the dove

HANDBOUND
AT THE

UNIVERSITY OF
TORONTO PPncc

THE NOVELS AND TALES OF
HENRY JAMES

New York Edition

VOLUME XIX

-

THE WINGS OF
THE DOVE

BY

HENRY JAMES

VOLUME I

NEW YORK

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

1909

'

Copyright, 1902 and 1909, by Charles Scribner's Sons

PS

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V-

PREFACE

« THE WINGS OF THE DOVE," published in 1902, represents
to my memory a very old — if I should n't perhaps rather
say a very young — motive ; I can scarce remember the time
when the situation on which this long-drawn fiction mainly
rests was not vividly present to me. The idea, reduced to
its essence, is that a of young person conscious of a great
capacity for life, but early stricken and doomed, condemned
to die under short respite, while also enamoured of the
world ; aware moreover of the condemnation and passion
ately desiring to " put in " before extinction as many of the
finer vibrations as possible, and so achieve, however briefly
and brokenly, the sense of having lived. Long had I turned
it over, standing off from it, yet coming back to it ; con
vinced of what might be done with it, yet seeing the theme
as formidable. The image so figured would be, at best, but
half the matter ; the rest would be all the picture of the
struggle involved, the adventure brought about, the gain re
corded or the loss incurred, the precious experience some
how compassed. These things, I had from the first felt,
would require much working-out ; that indeed was the case
with most things worth working at all ; yet there are sub
jects and subjects, and this one seemed particularly to bristle.
It was formed, I judged, to make the wary adventurer walk
round and round it — it had in fact a charm that invited and
mystified alike that attention ; not being somehow what one
thought of as a " frank " subject, after the fashion of some,
with its elements well in view and its whole character in its
face. It stood there with secrets and compartments, with
possible treacheries and traps ; it might have a great deal to
give, but would probably ask for equal services in return,
and would collect this debt to the last shilling. It involved,
to begin with, the placing in the strongest light a person
infirm and ill — a case sure to prove difficult and to require

PREFACE

much handling ; though giving perhaps, with other matters,
one of those chances for good taste, possibly even for the
play of the very best in the world, that are not only always
to be invoked and cultivated, but that are absolutely to be
jumped at from the moment they make a sign.

Yes then, the case prescribed for its central figure a sick
young woman, at the whole course of whose disintegration
and the whole ordeal of whose consciousness one would
have quite honestly to assist. The expression of her state
and that of one's intimate relation to it might therefore well
need to be discreet and ingenious ; a reflexion that fortun
ately grew and grew, however, in proportion as I focussed
my image — roundabout which, as it persisted, I repeat, the
interesting possibilities and the attaching wonderments, not
to say the insoluble mysteries, thickened apace. Why had
one to look so straight in the face and so closely to cross-
question that idea of making one's protagonist "sick"? —
as if to be menaced with death or danger had n't been from
time immemorial, for heroine or hero, the very shortest of
all cuts to the interesting state. Why should a figure be
disqualified for a central position by the particular circum
stance that might most quicken, that might crown with a
fine intensity, its liability to many accidents, its conscious
ness of all relations ? This circumstance, true enough, might
disqualify it for many activities — even though we should
have imputed to it the unsurpassable activity of passionate,
of inspired resistance. This last fact was the real issue, for
the way grew straight from the moment one recognised that
the poet essentially can't be concerned with the act of dying.
Let him deal with the sickest of the sick, it is still by the
act of living that they appeal to him, and appeal the more
as the conditions plot against them and prescribe the battle.
The process of life gives way fighting, and often may so
shine out on the lost ground as in no other connexion.
One had had moreover, as a various chronicler, one's sec
ondary physical weaklings and failures, one's accessory in
valids — introduced with a complacency that made light of
criticism. To Ralph Touchett in "The Portrait of a Lady,"

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PREFACE

for instance, his deplorable state of health was not only no
drawback ; I had clearly been right in counting it, for any
happy effect he should produce, a positive good mark, a di
rect aid to pleasantness and vividness. The reason of this
moreover could never in the world have been his fact of
sex ; since men, among the mortally afflicted, suffer on the
whole more overtly and more grossly than women, and re
sist with a ruder, an inferior strategy. I had thus to take
that anomaly for what it was worth, and I give it here but
as one of the ambiguities amid which my subject ended by
making itself at home and seating itself quite in confidence.
With the clearness I have just noted, accordingly, the
last thing in the world it proposed to itself was to be the
record predominantly of a collapse. I don't mean to say that
my offered victim was not present to my imagination, con
stantly, as dragged by a greater force than any she herself
could exert ; she had been given me from far back as con
testing every inch of the road, as catching at every object
the grasp of which might make for delay, as clutching these
things to the last moment of her strength. Such an attitude
and such movements, the passion they expressed and the
success they in fact represented, what were they in truth but
the soul of drama ? — which is the portrayal, as we know,
of a catastrophe determined in spite of oppositions. My
young woman would herself be the opposition — to the
catastrophe announced by the associated Fates, powers con
spiring to a sinister end and, with their command of means,
finally achieving it, yet in such straits really to stifle the
sacred spark that, obviously, a creature so animated, an ad
versary so subtle, could n't but be felt worthy, under what
ever weaknesses, of the foreground and the limelight. She
would meanwhile wish, moreover, all along, to live for par
ticular things, she would found her struggle on particular
human interests, which would inevitably determine, in re
spect to her, the attitude of other persons, persons affected
in such a manner as to make them part of the action. If her
impulse to wrest from her shrinking hour still as much of
the fruit of life as possible, if this longing can take effect

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only by the aid of others, their participation (appealed to,
entangled and coerced as they find themselves) becomes
their drama too — that of their promoting her illusion, under
her importunity, for reasons, for interests and advantages,
from motives and points of view, of their own. Some of
these promptings, evidently, would be of the highest order
— others doubtless might n't ; but they would make up to
gether, for her, contributively, her sum of experience, re
present to her somehow, in good faith or in bad, what she
should have known. Somehow, too, at such a rate, one would
see the persons subject to them drawn in as by some pool
of a Lorelei — see them terrified and tempted and charmed ;
bribed away, it may even be, from more prescribed and nat
ural orbits, inheriting from their connexion with her strange
difficulties and still stranger opportunities, confronted with
rare questions and called upon for new discriminations.
Thus the scheme of her situation would, in a comprehens
ive way, see itself constituted; the rest of the interest
would be in the number and nature of the particulars.
Strong among these, naturally, the need that life should,
apart from her infirmity, present itself to our young woman
as quite dazzlingly liveable, and that if the great pang for
her is in what she must give up we shall appreciate it the
more from the sight of all she has.

One would see her then as possessed of all things, all but
the single most precious assurance ; freedom and money and
a mobile mind and personal charm, the power to interest
and attach ; attributes, each one, enhancing the value of a
future. From the moment his imagination began to deal with
her at close quarters, in fact, nothing could more engage
her designer than to work out the detail of her perfect right-
ness for her part ; nothing above all more solicit him than
to recognise fifty reasons for her national and social status.
She should be the last fine flower — blooming alone, for
the fullest attestation of her freedom — of an " old " New
York stem ; the happy congruities thus preserved for her
being matters, however, that I may not now go into, and
this even though the fine association that shall yet elsewhere

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await me is of a sort, at the best, rather to defy than to en
courage exact expression. There goes with it, for the hero
ine of " The Wings of the Dove," a strong and special
implication of liberty, liberty of action, of choice, of appre
ciation, of contact — proceeding from sources that provide
better for large independence, I think, than any other con
ditions in the world — and this would be in particular what
we should feel ourselves deeply concerned with. I had from
far back mentally projected a certain sort of young Ameri
can as more the " heir of all the ages " than any other
young person whatever (and precisely on those grounds I
have just glanced at but to pass them by for the moment) ;
so that here was a chance to confer on some such figure a
supremely touching value. To be the heir of all the ages
only to know yourself, as that consciousness should deepen,
balked of your inheritance, would be to play the part, it
struck me, or at least to arrive at the type, in the light on
the whole the most becoming. Otherwise, truly, what a
perilous part to play out — what a suspicion of u swagger "
in positively attempting it ! So at least I could reason — so
I even think I had to — to keep my subject to a decent
compactness. For already, from an early stage, it had begun
richly to people itself: the difficulty was to see whom the
situation I had primarily projected might, by this, that or
the other turn, not draw in. My business was to watch its
turns as the fond parent watches a child perched, for its first
riding-lesson, in the saddle ; yet its interest, I had all the
while to recall, was just in its making, on such a scale, for
developments.

What one had discerned, at all events, from an early
stage, was that a young person so devoted and exposed, a
creature with her security hanging so by a hair, could n't
but fall somehow into some abysmal trap — this being,
dramatically speaking, what such a situation most naturally
implied and imposed. Did n't the truth and a great part of
the interest also reside in the appearance that she would
constitute for others (given her passionate yearning to live
while she might) a complication as great as any they might

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PREFACE

constitute for herself? — which is what I mean when I
speak of such matters as " natural." They would be as nat
ural, these tragic, pathetic, ironic, these indeed for the most
part sinister, liabilities, to her living associates, as they could
be to herself as prime subject. If her story was to consist,
as it could so little help doing, of her being let in, as we say,
for this, that and the other irreducible anxiety, how could
she not have put a premium on the acquisition, by any close
sharer of her life, of a consciousness similarly embarrassed ?
I have named the Rhine-maiden, but our young friend's
existence would create rather, all round her, very much that
whirlpool movement of the waters produced by the sinking
of a big vessel or the failure of a great business ; when we
figure to ourselves the strong narrowing eddies, the immense
force of suction, the general engulfment that, for any neigh
bouring object, makes immersion inevitable. I need scarce
say, however, that in spite of these communities of doom I
saw the main dramatic complication much more prepared
for my vessel of sensibility than by her — the work of other
hands (though with her own imbrued too, after all, in the
measure of their never not being, in some direction, gener
ous and extravagant, and thereby provoking).

The great point was, at all events, that if in a predica
ment she was to be, accordingly, it would be of the essence
to create the predicament promptly and build it up solidly,
so that it should have for us as much as possible its ominous
air of awaiting her. That reflexion I found, betimes, not
less inspiring than urgent ; one begins so, in such a business,
by looking about for one's compositional key, unable as one
can only be to move till one has found it. To start without
it is to pretend to enter the train and, still more, to remain
in one's seat, without a ticket. Well — in the steady light
and for the continued charm of these verifications — I had
secured my ticket over the tolerably long line laid down for
u The Wings of the Dove " from the moment I had noted
that there could be no full presentation of Milly Theale as
engaged with elements amid which she was to draw her
breath in such pain, should not the elements have been, with

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all solicitude, duly prefigured. If one had seen that her
stricken state was but half her case, the correlative half
being the state of others as affected by her (they too should
have a " case," bless them, quite as much as she !) then I
was free to choose, as it were, the half with which I should
begin. If, as I had fondly noted, the little world determined
for her was to "bristle" — I delighted in the term! — with
meanings, so, by the same token, could I but make my medal
hang free, its obverse and its reverse, its face and its back,
would beautifully become optional for the spectator. I some
how wanted them correspondingly embossed, wanted them
inscribed and figured with an equal salience ; yet it was
none the less visibly my " key," as I have said, that though
my regenerate young New Yorker, and what might depend
on her, should form my centre, my circumference was every
whit as treatable. Therefore I must trust myself to know
when to proceed from the one and when from the other.
Preparatively and, as it were, yearningly — given the whole
ground — one began, in the event, with the outer ring, ap
proaching the centre thus by narrowing circumvallations.
There, full-blown, accordingly, from one hour to the other,
rose one's process — for which there remained all the while
so many amusing formulae.

The medal did hang free — I felt this perfectly, I remem
ber, from the moment I had comfortably laid the ground
provided in my first Book, ground from which Milly is
superficially so absent. I scarce remember perhaps a case —
I like even with this public grossness to insist on it — in which
the curiosity of " beginning far back," as far back as pos
sible, and even of going, to the same tune, far " behind," that
is behind the face of the subject, was to assert itself with
less scruple. The free hand, in this connexion, was above
all agreeable — the hand the freedom of which I owed to the
fact that the work had ignominiously failed, in advance, of
all power to see itself " serialised." This failure had repeat
edly waited, for me, upon shorter fictions; but the consider
able production we here discuss was (as "The Golden Bowl"
was to be, two or three years later) born, not otherwise than

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PREFACE

a little bewilderedly, into a world of periodicals and editors,
of roaring " successes " in fine, amid which it was well-nigh
unnotedly to lose itself. There is fortunately something brac
ing, ever, in the alpine chill, that of some high icy arete, shed
by the cold editorial shoulder; sour grapes may at moments
fairly intoxicate and the story-teller worth his salt rejoice to
feel again how many accommodations he can practise. Those
addressed to " conditions of publication " have in a degree
their interesting, or at least their provoking, side ; but their
charm is qualified by the fact that the prescriptions here
spring from a soil often wholly alien to the ground of the
work itself. They are almost always the fruit of another air
altogether and conceived in a light liable to represent within
the circle of the work itself little else than darkness. Still,
when not too blighting, they often operate as a tax on ingen
uity — that ingenuity of the expert craftsman which likes to
be taxed very much to the same tune to which a well-bred
horse likes to be saddled. The best and finest ingenuities,
nevertheless, with all respect to that truth, are apt to be, not
one's compromises, but one's fullest conformities, and I well
remember, in the case before us, the pleasure of feeling my
divisions, my proportions and general rhythm, rest all on
permanent rather than in any degree on momentary pro
prieties. It was enough for my alternations, thus, that they
were good in themselves ; it was in fact so much for them
that I really think any further account of the constitution
of the book reduces itself to a just notation of the law they
followed.

There was the u fun," to begin with, of establishing one's
successive centres — of fixing them so exactly that the por
tions of the subject commanded by them as by happy points
of view, and accordingly treated from them, would consti
tute, so to speak, sufficiently solid blocks of wrought material,
squared to the sharp edge, as to have weight and mass and
carrying power ; to make for construction, that is, to con
duce to effect and to provide for beauty. Such a block,
obviously, is the whole preliminary presentation of Kate
Croy, which, from the first, I recall, absolutely declined to

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enact itself save in terms of amplitude. Terms of ampli
tude, terms of atmosphere, those terms, and those terms
only, in which images assert their fulness and roundness,
their power to revolve, so that they have sides and backs,
parts in the shade as true as parts in the sun — these were
plainly to be my conditions, right and left, and I was so far
from overrating the amount of expression the whole thing,
as I saw and felt it, would require, that to retrace the way
at present is, alas, more than anything else, but to mark the
gaps and the lapses, to miss, one by one, the intentions that,
with the best will in the world, were not to fructify. I have
just said that the process of the general attempt is described
from the moment the" blocks "are numbered, and that would
be a true enough picture of my plan. Yet one's plan, alas,
is one thing and one's result another; so that I am perhaps
nearer the point in saying that this last strikes me at present
as most characterised by the happy features that were, under
my first and most blest illusion, to have contributed to it.
I meet them all, as I renew acquaintance, I mourn for them
all as I remount the stream, the absent values, the palpable
voids, the missing links, the mocking shadows, that reflect,
taken together, the early bloom of one's good faith. Such
cases are of course far from abnormal — so far from it that
some acute mind ought surely to have worked out by this
time the "law" of the degree in which the artist's energy
fairly depends on his fallibility. How much and how often,
and in what connexions and with what almost infinite variety,
must he be a dupe, that of his prime object, to be at all measur
ably a master, that of his actual substitute for it — or in other
words at all appreciably to exist ? He places, after an earnest
survey, the piers of his bridge — he has at least sounded deep
enough, heaven knows, for their brave position; yet the
bridge spans the stream, after the fact, in apparently com
plete independence of these properties, the principal grace
of the original design. They were an illusion, for their neces
sary hour; but the span itself, whether of a single arch or
of many, seems by the oddest chance in the world to be a
reality ; since, actually, the rueful builder, passing under it,

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PREFACE

sees figures and hears sounds above : he makes out, with his
heart in his throat, that it bears and is positively being
« used."

The building-up of Kate Croy's consciousness to the
capacity for the load little by little to be laid on it was,
by way of example, to have been a matter of as many hun
dred close-packed bricks as there are actually poor dozens.
The image of her so compromised and compromising father
was all effectively to have pervaded her life, was in a cer
tain particular way to have tampered with her spring ; by
which I mean that the shame and the irritation and the
depression, the general poisonous influence of him, were to
have been shown^ with a truth beyond the compass even of
one's most emphasised u word of honour " for it, to do these
things. But where do we find him, at this time of day,
save in a beggarly scene or two which scarce arrives at the
dignity of functional reference ? He but " looks in," poor
beautiful dazzling, damning apparition that he was to have
been ; he sees his place so taken, his company so little missed,
that, cocking again that fine form of hat which has yielded
him for so long his one effective cover, he turns away with
a whistle of indifference that nobly misrepresents the deepest
disappointment of his life. One's poor word of honour has
had to pass muster for the show. Every one, in short, was to
have enjoyed so much better a chance that, like stars of the
theatre condescending to oblige, they have had to take small
parts, to content themselves with minor identities, in order
to come on at all. I have n't the heart now, I confess, to
adduce the detail of so many lapsed importances ; the ex
planation of most of which, after all, I take to have been in
the crudity of a truth beating full upon me through these
reconsiderations, the odd inveteracy with which picture, at
almost any turn, is jealous of drama, and drama (though on
the whole with a greater patience, I think) suspicious of
picture. Between them, no doubt, they do much for the
theme ; yet each baffles insidiously the other's ideal and eats
round the edges of its position ; each is too ready to say " I
can take the thing for ' done ' only when done in my way."

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The residuum of comfort for the witness of these broils is
of course meanwhile in the convenient reflexion, invented
for him in the twilight of time and the infancy of art by the
Angel, not to say by the Demon, of Compromise, that
nothing is so easy to " do " as not to be thankful for almost
any stray help in its getting done. It was n't, after this fashion,
by making good one's dream of Lionel Croy that my struct
ure was to stand on its feet — any more than it was by let
ting him go that I was to be left irretrievably lamenting.
The who and the what, the how and the why, the whence
and the whither of Merton Densher, these, no less, were
quantities and attributes that should have danced about him
with the antique grace of nymphs and fauns circling round
a bland Hermes and crowning him with flowers. One's
main anxiety, for each one's agents, is that the air of each
shall be given ; but what does the whole thing become, after
all, as one goes, but a series of sad places at which the hand
of generosity has been cautioned and stayed? The young
man's situation, personal, professional, social, was to have
been so decanted for us that we should get all the taste ; we
were to have been penetrated with Mrs. Lowder, by the
same token, saturated with her presence, her " personality,"
and felt all her weight in the scale. We were to have re
velled in Mrs. Stringham, my heroine's attendant friend, her
fairly choral Bostonian, a subject for innumerable touches,
and in an extended and above all an animated reflexion of
Milly Theale's experience of English society ; just as the
strength and sense of the situation in Venice, for our gath
ered friends, was to have come to us in a deeper draught
out of a larger cup, and just as the pattern of Densher's
final position and fullest consciousness there was to have
been marked in fine stitches, all silk and gold, all pink and
silver, that have had to remain, alas, but entwined upon the
reel.

It is n't, no doubt, however — to recover, after all, our
critical balance — that the pattern did n't, for each compart
ment, get itself somehow wrought, and that we might n't
thus, piece by piece, opportunity offering, trace it over and

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PREFACE

study it. The thing has doubtless, as a whole, the advant
age that each piece is true to its pattern, and that while it
pretends to make no simple statement it yet never lets go
its scheme of clearness. Applications of this scheme are
continuous and exemplary enough, though I scarce leave
myself room to glance at them. The clearness is obtained in
Book First — or otherwise, as I have said, in the first
" piece," each Book having its subordinate and contributive
pattern — through the associated consciousness of my two
prime young persons, for whom I early recognised that I
should have to consent, under stress, to a practical fusion
of consciousness. It is into the young woman's " ken " that
Merton Densher is represented as swimming ; but her mind
is not here, rigorously, the one reflector. There are occa
sions when it plays this part, just as there are others when
his plays it, and an intelligible plan consists naturally not a
little in fixing such occasions and making them, on one side
and the other, sufficient to themselves. Do I sometimes in
fact forfeit the advantage of that distinctness ? Do I ever
abandon one centre for another after the former has been
postulated? From the moment we proceed by "centres" —
and I have never, I confess, embraced the logic of any su
perior process — they must be, each, as a basis, selected and
fixed ; after which it is that, in the high interest of economy
of treatment, they determine and rule. There is no economy
of treatment without an adopted, a related point of view,
and though I understand, under certain degrees of pressure,
a represented community of vision between several parties
to the action when it makes for concentration, I understand
no breaking-up of the register, no sacrifice of the recording
consistency, that does n't rather scatter and weaken. In this
truth resides the secret of the discriminated occasion — that
aspect of the subject which we have our noted choice of
treating either as picture or scenically, but which is apt,
I think, to show its fullest worth in the Scene. Beautiful
exceedingly, for that matter, those occasions or parts of an
occasion when the boundary line between picture and scene
bears a little the weight of the double pressure.

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Such would be the case, I can't but surmise, for the long
passage that forms here before us the opening of Book Fourth,
where all the offered life centres, to intensity, in the disclos
ure of Milly's single throbbing consciousness, but where,
for a due rendering, everything has to be brought to a head.
This passage, the view of her introduction to Mrs. Lowder's
circle, has its mate, for illustration, later on in the book and
at a crisis for which the occasion submits to another rule.
My registers or " reflectors," as I so conveniently name them
(burnished indeed as they generally are by the intelligence,
the curiosity, the passion, the force of the moment, what
ever it be, directing them), work, as we have seen, in ar
ranged alternation ; so that in the second connexion I here
glance at it is Kate Croy who is, " for all she is worth,"
turned on. She is turned on largely at Venice, where the
appearances, rich and obscure and portentous (another word
I rejoice in) as they have by that time become and alto
gether exquisite as they remain, are treated almost wholly
through her vision of them and Densher's (as to the
lucid interplay of which conspiring and conflicting agents
there would be a great deal to say). It is in Kate's con
sciousness that at the stage in question the drama is brought
to a head, and the occasion on which, in the splendid
saloon of poor Milly's hired palace, she takes the measure
of her friend's festal evening, squares itself to the same syn
thetic firmness as the compact constructional block inserted
by the scene at Lancaster Gate. Milly's situation ceases at
a given moment to be " renderable " in terms closer than
those supplied by Kate's intelligence, or, in a richer degree,
by Densher's, or, for one fond hour, by poor Mrs. String-
ham's (since to that sole brief futility is this last participant,
crowned by my original plan with the quaintest functions,
in fact reduced) ; just as Kate's relation with Densher and
Densher's with Kate have ceased previously, and are then
to cease again, to be projected for us, so far as Milly is con
cerned with them, on any more responsible plate than that
of the latter's admirable anxiety. It is as if, for these aspects,
the impersonal plate — in other words the poor author's com--
—- 1 xvii

PREFACE

paratively cold affirmation or thin guarantee — had felt it
self a figure of attestation at once too gross and too blood
less, likely to affect us as an abuse of privilege when not as
an abuse of knowledge.

Heaven forbid, we say to ourselves during almost the
whole Venetian climax, heaven forbid we should " know "
anything more of our ravaged sister than what Densher
darkly pieces together, or than what Kate Croy pays, heroic
ally, it must be owned, at the hour of her visit alone to
Densher's lodging, for her superior handling and her dire
profanation of. For we have time, while this passage lasts,
to turn round critically ; we have time to recognise inten
tions and proprieties j we have time to catch glimpses of
an economy of composition, as I put it, interesting in it
self: all in spite of the author's scarce more than half-
dissimulated despair at the inveterate displacement of his
general centre. " The Wings of the Dove" happens to offer
perhaps the most striking example I may cite (though with
public penance for it already performed) of my regular fail
ure to keep the appointed halves of my whole equal. Here
the makeshift middle — for which the best I can say is that
it 's always rueful and never impudent — reigns with even
more than its customary contrition, though passing itself
off perhaps too with more than its usual craft. Nowhere, I
seem to recall, had the need of dissimulation been felt so as
anguish ; nowhere had I condemned a luckless theme to
complete its revolution, burdened with the accumulation
of its difficulties, the difficulties that grow with a theme's
development, in quarters so cramped. Of course, as every
novelist knows, it is difficulty that inspires ; only, for that
perfection of charm, it must have been difficulty inherent
and congenital, and not difficulty " caught " by the wrong
frequentations. The latter half, that is the false and de
formed half, of " The Wings " would verily, I think, form
a signal object-lesson for a literary critic bent on improv
ing his occasion to the profit of the budding artist. This
whole corner of the picture bristles with " dodges " — such
as he should feel himself all committed to recognise and
xviii

PREFACE

denounce — for disguising the reduced scale of the exhibi
tion, for foreshortening at any cost, for imparting to patches
the value of presences, for dressing objects in an air as of
the dimensions they can't possibly have. Thus he would have
his free hand for pointing out what a tangled web we weave
when — well, when, through our mislaying or otherwise
trifling with our blest pair of compasses, we have to pro
duce the illusion of mass without the illusion of extent.
There is a job quite to the measure of most of our moni
tors — and with the interest for them well enhanced by the
preliminary cunning quest for the spot where deformity has
begun.

I recognise meanwhile, throughout the long earlier reach
of the book, not only no deformities but, I think, a posi
tively close and felicitous application of method, the pre
served consistencies of which, often illusive, but never really
lapsing, it would be of a certain diversion, and might be of
some profit, to follow. The author's accepted task at the
outset has been to suggest with force the nature of the tie
formed between the two young persons first introduced —
to give the full impression of its peculiar worried and baffled,
yet clinging and confident, ardour. The picture constituted,
so far as may be, is that of a pair of natures well-nigh con
sumed by a sense of their intimate affinity and congruity,
the reciprocity of their desire, and thus passionately impa
tient of barriers and delays, yet with qualities of intelligence
and character that they are meanwhile extraordinarily able
to draw upon for the enrichment of their relation, the ex
tension of their prospect and the support of their " game."
They are far from a common couple, Merton Densher
and Kate Croy, as befits the remarkable fashion in which
fortune was to waylay and opportunity was to distinguish
them — the whole strange truth of their response to which
opening involves also, in its order, no vulgar art of exhibi
tion ; but what they have most to tell us is that, all uncon
sciously and with the best faith in the world, all by mere
force of the terms of their superior passion combined with
their superior diplomacy, they are laying a trap for the great

xix

PREFACE

innocence to come. If I like, as I have confessed, the " por
tentous " look, I was perhaps never to set so high a value
on it as for all this prompt provision of forces unwittingly
waiting to close round my eager heroine (to the eventual
deep chill of her eagerness) as the result of her mere lifting
of a latch. Infinitely interesting to have built up the rela
tion of the others to the point at which its aching restless
ness, its need to affirm itself otherwise than by an exasper
ated patience, meets as with instinctive relief and recognition
the possibilities shining out of Milly Theale. Infinitely in
teresting to have prepared and organised, correspondingly,
that young woman's precipitations and liabilities, to have
constructed, for Drama essentially to take possession, the
whole bright house of her exposure.

These references, however, reflect too little of the detail
of the treatment imposed ; such a detail as I for instance
get hold of in the fact of Densher's interview with Mrs.
Lowder before he goes to America. It forms, in this pre
liminary picture, the one patch not strictly seen over Kate
Croy's shoulder ; though it 's notable that immediately after,
at the first possible moment, we surrender again to our
major convenience, as it happens to be at the time, that of
our drawing breath through the young woman's lungs. Once
more, in other words, before we know it, Densher's direct
vision of the scene at Lancaster Gate is replaced by her ap
prehension, her contributive assimilation, of his experience :
it melts back into that accumulation, which we have been,
as it were, saving up. Does my apparent deviation here
count accordingly as a muddle ? — one of the muddles ever
blooming so thick in any soil that fails to grow reasons and
determinants. No, distinctly not ; for I had definitely
opened the door, as attention of perusal of the first two
Books will show, to the subjective community of my young
pair. (Attention of perusal, I thus confess by the way, is
what I at every point, as well as here, absolutely invoke
and take for granted ; a truth I avail myself of this occasion
to note once for all — in the interest of that variety of ideal
reigning, I gather, in the connexion. The enjoyment of a

xx

PREFACE

work of art, the acceptance of an irresistible illusion, con
stituting, to my sense, our highest experience of " luxury,"
the luxury is not greatest, by my consequent measure, when
the work asks for as little attention as possible. It is great
est, it is delightfully, divinely great, when we feel the sur
face, like the thick ice of the skater's pond, bear without
cracking the strongest pressure we throw on it. The sound
of the crack one may recognise, but never surely to call it
a luxury.) That I had scarce availed myself of the privilege
of seeing with Densher's eyes is another matter ; the point
is that I had intelligently marked my possible, my occa
sional need of it. So, at all events, the constructional
" block " of the first two Books compactly forms itself. A
new block, all of the squarest and not a little of the smooth
est, begins with the Third — by which I mean of course a
new mass of interest governed from a new centre. Here
again I make prudent provision — to be sure to keep my cen
tre strong. It dwells mainly, we at once see, in the depths
of Milly Theale's " case," where, close beside it, however,
we meet a supplementary reflector, that of the lucid even
though so quivering spirit of her dedicated friend.

The more or less associated consciousness of the two
women deals thus, unequally, with the next presented face
of the subject — deals with it to the exclusion of the deal
ing of others ; and if, for a highly particular moment, I allot
to Mrs. Stringham the responsibility of the direct appeal to
us, it is again, charming to relate, on behalf of that play of
the portentous which I cherish so as a " value " and am
accordingly for ever setting in motion. There is an hour of
evening, on the alpine height, at which it becomes of the
last importance that our young woman should testify emin
ently in this direction. But as I was to find it long since
of a blest wisdom that no expense should be incurred or
met, in any corner of picture of mine, without some con
crete image of the account kept of it, that is of its being
organically re-economised, so under that dispensation Mrs.
Stringham has to register the transaction. Book Fifth is a
new block mainly in its provision of a new set of occasions,

xxi

PREFACE

»

which readopt, for their order, the previous centre, Milly's
now almost full-blown consciousness. At my game, with re
newed zest, of driving portents home, I have by this time all
the choice of those that are to brush that surface with a dark
wing. They are used, to our profit, on an elastic but a definite
system ; by which I mean that having to sound here and
there a little deep, as a test, for my basis of method, I find
it everywhere obstinately present. It draws the "occasion"
into tune and keeps it so, to repeat my tiresome term ; my
nearest approach to muddlement is to have sometimes — but
not too often — to break my occasions small. Some of them
succeed in remaining ample and in really aspiring then to
the higher, the sustained lucidity. The whole actual centre
of the work, resting on a misplaced pivot and lodged in
Book Fifth, pretends to a long reach, or at any rate to the
larger foreshortening — though bringing home to me, on re-
perusal, what I find striking, charming and curious, the au
thor's instinct everywhere for the indirect presentation of his
main image. I note how, again and again, I go but a little
way with the direct — that is with the straight exhibition
of Milly ; it resorts for relief, this process, whenever it can,
to some kinder, some merciful indirection : all as if to ap
proach her circuitously, deal with her at second hand, as an
unspotted princess is ever dealt with ; the pressure all round
her kept easy for her, the sounds, the movements regulated,
the forms and ambiguities made charming. All of which
proceeds, obviously, from her painter's tenderness of imag
ination about her, which reduces him to watching her, as it
were, through the successive windows of other people's in
terest in her. So, if we talk of princesses, do the balconies
opposite the palace gates, do the coigns of vantage and re
spect enjoyed for a fee, rake from afar the mystic figure in
the gilded coach as it comes forth into the great place. But
my use of windows and balconies is doubtless at best an ex
travagance by itself, and as to what there may be to note,
of this and other supersubtleties, other arch-refinements, of
tact and taste, of design and instinct, in " The Wings of
the Dove," I become conscious of overstepping my space

xxii

PREFACE

without having brought the full quantity to light. The fail
ure leaves me with a burden of residuary comment of which
I yet boldly hope elsewhere to discharge myself.

HENRY JAMES.

BOOK FIRST

THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

SHE waited, Kate Croy, for her father to come in,
but he kept her unconscionably, and there were mo
ments at which she showed herself, in the glass over
the mantel, a face positively pale with the irritation
that had brought her to the point of going away with
out sight of him. It was at this point, however, that
she remained; changing her place, moving from the
shabby sofa to the armchair upholstered in a glazed
cloth that gave at once — she had tried it — the sense
of the slippery and of the sticky. She had looked at
the sallow prints on the walls and at the lonely mag
azine, a year old, that combined, with a small lamp in
coloured glass and a knitted white centre-piece want
ing in freshness, to enhance the effect of the purplish
cloth on the principal table; she had above all from
time to time taken a brief stand on the small balcony
to which the pair of long windows gave access. The
vulgar little street, in this view, offered scant relief
from the vulgar little room; its main office was to
suggest to her that the narrow black house-fronts,
adjusted to a standard that would have been low
even for backs, constituted quite the publicity im
plied by such privacies. One felt them in the room
exactly as one felt the room — the hundred like it
or worse — in the street. Each time she turned in
again, each time, in her impatience, she gave him up,

3

THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

it was to sound to a deeper depth, while she tasted
the faint flat emanation of things, the failure of fortune
and of honour. If she continued to wait it was really
in a manner that she might n't add the shame of fear,
of individual, of personal collapse, to all the other
shames. To feel the street, to feel the room, to feel
the table-cloth and the centre-piece and the lamp,
gave her a small salutary sense at least of neither
shirking nor lying. This whole vision was the worst
thing yet — as including in particular the interview
to which she had braced herself; and for what had
she come but for the worst ? She tried to be sad so as
not to be angry, but it made her angry that she could
n't be sad. And yet where was misery, misery too
beaten for blame and chalk-marked by fate like a
"lot" at a common auction, if not in these merciless
signs of mere mean stale feelings ?

Her father's life, her sister's, her own, that of her
two lost brothers — the whole history of their house
had the effect of some fine florid voluminous phrase,
say even a musical, that dropped first into words and
notes without sense and then, hanging unfinished, into
no words nor any notes at all. Why should a set of
people have been put in motion, on such a scale and
with such an air of being equipped for a profitable
journey, only to break down without an accident, to
stretch themselves in the wayside dust without a
reason ? The answer to these questions was not in
Chirk Street, but the questions themselves bristled
there, and the girl's repeated pause before the mirror
and the chimney-place might have represented her
nearest approach to an escape from them. Was n't it

4

BOOK FIRST

in fact the partial escape from this "worst" in which
she was steeped to be able to make herself out again
as agreeable to see ? She stared into the tarnished
glass too hard indeed to be staring at her beauty alone.
She readjusted the poise of her black closely-feathered
hat; retouched, beneath it, the thick fall of her dusky
hair; kept her eyes aslant no less on her beautiful
averted than on her beautiful presented oval. She
was dressed altogether in black, which gave an even
tone, by contrast, to her clear face and made her hair
more harmoniously dark. Outside, on the balcony,
her eyes showed as blue; within, at the mirror, they
showed almost as black. She was handsome, but the
degree of it was not sustained by items and aids ; a
circumstance moreover playing its part at almost any
time in the impression she produced. The impression
was one that remained, but as regards the sources of
it no sum in addition would have made up the total.
She had stature without height, grace without motion,
presence without mass. Slender and simple, fre
quently soundless, she was somehow always in the
line of the eye — she counted singularly for its pleas
ure. More "dressed," often, with fewer accessories,
than other women, or less dressed, should occasion re
quire, with more, she probably could n't have given
the key to these felicities. They were mysteries of
which her friends were conscious — those friends
whose general explanation was to say that she was
clever, whether or no it were taken by the world as
the cause or as the effect of her charm. If she saw
more things than her fine face in the dull glass of her
father's lodgings she might have seen that after all

5

THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

she was not herself a fact in the collapse. She did n't
hold herself cheap, she did n't make for misery. Per
sonally, no, she was n't chalk-marked for auction.
She had n't given up yet, and the broken sentence, if
she was the last word, would end with a sort of mean
ing. There was a minute during which, though her
eyes were fixed, she quite visibly lost herself in the
thought of the way she might still pull things round
had she only been a man. It was the name, above all,
she would take in hand — the precious name she so
liked and that, in spite of the harm her wretched
father had done it, was n't yet past praying for. She
loved it in fact the more tenderly for that bleeding
wound. But what could a penniless girl do with it
but let it go ?

When her father at last appeared she became, as
usual, instantly aware of the futility of any effort
to hold him to anything. He had written her he was
ill, too ill to leave his room, and that he must see her
without delay; and if this had been, as was probable,
the sketch of a design he was indifferent even to the
moderate finish required for deception. He had
clearly wanted, for the perversities he called his rea
sons, to see her, just as she herself had sharpened for
a talk ; but she now again felt, in the inevitability of
the freedom he used with her, all the old ache, her
poor mother's very own, that he could n't touch you
ever so lightly without setting up. No relation with
him could be so short or so superficial as not to be
somehow to your hurt ; and this, in the strangest way
in the world, not because he desired it to be — feeling
often, as he surely must, the profit for him of its not

6

BOOK FIRST

being — but because there was never a mistake for
you that he could leave unmade, nor a conviction of
his impossibility in you that he could approach you
without strengthening. He might have awaited her on
the sofa in his sitting-room, or might have stayed in
bed and received her in that situation. She was glad
to be spared the sight of such penetralia, but it would
have reminded her a little less that there was no truth
in him. This was the weariness of every fresh meet
ing; he dealt out lies as he might the cards from the
greasy old pack for the game of diplomacy to which
you were to sit down with him. The inconvenience —
as always happens in such cases — was not that you
minded what was false, but that you missed what was
true. He might be ill and it might suit you to know
it, but no contact with him, for this, could ever be
straight enough. Just so he even might die, but Kate
fairly wondered on what evidence of his own she would
some day have to believe it.

He had not at present come down from his room,
which she knew to be above the one they were in:
he had already been out of the house, though he
would either, should she challenge him, deny it or
present it as a proof of his extremity. She had, how
ever, by this time, quite ceased to challenge him ; not
only, face to face with him, vain irritation dropped,
but he breathed upon the tragic consciousness in such
a way that after a moment nothing of it was left. The
difficulty was not less that he breathed in the same
way upon the comic: she almost believed that with
this latter she might still have found a foothold for
clinging to him. He had ceased to be amusing — he

7

THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

was really too inhuman. His perfect look, which had
floated him so long, was practically perfect still; but
one had long since for every occasion taken it for
granted. Nothing could have better shown than the
actual how right one had been. He looked exactly as
much as usual — all pink and silver as to skin and
hair, all straightness and starch as to figure and dress ;
the man in the world least connected with anything
unpleasant. He was so particularly the English
gentleman and the fortunate settled normal person.
Seen at a foreign table d'hote he suggested but one
thing : " In what perfection England produces them ! "
He had kind safe eyes, and a voice which, for all its
clean fulness, told the quiet tale of its having never
had once to raise itself. Life had met him so, half
way, 'and had turned round so to walk with him, plac
ing a hand in his arm and fondly leaving him to choose
the pace. Those who knew him a little said "How
he does dress ! " — those who knew him better said
"How does he?" The one stray gleam of comedy
just now in his daughter's eyes was the absurd feel
ing he momentarily made her have of being herself
"looked up" by him in sordid lodgings. For a min
ute after he came in it was as if the place were her
own and he the visitor with susceptibilities. He gave
you absurd feelings, he had indescribable arts, that
quite turned the tables : this had been always how he
came to see her mother so long as her mother would
see him. He came from places they had often not
known about, but he patronised Lexham Gardens.
Kate's only actual expression of impatience, however,
was "I'm glad you're so much better!"

8

BOOK FIRST

" I 'm not so much better, my dear — I *m exceed
ingly unwell; the proof of which is precisely that I 've
been out to the chemist's — that beastly fellow at the
corner." So Mr. Croy showed he could qualify the
humble hand that assuaged him. "I 'm taking some
thing he has made up for me. It 's just why I 've sent
for you — that you may see me as I really am."

"Oh papa, it's long since I've ceased to see you
otherwise than as you really are! I think we've all
arrived by this time at the right word for that : * You 're
beautiful — nen parlons plus* You 're as beautiful
as ever — you look lovely." He judged meanwhile
her own appearance, as she knew she could always
trust him to do; recognising, estimating, sometimes
disapproving, what she wore, showing her the interest
he continued to take in her. He might really take none
at all, yet she virtually knew herself the creature in the
world to whom he was least indifferent. She had often
enough wondered what on earth, at the pass he had
reached, could give him pleasure, and had come back
on these occasions to that. It gave him pleasure that
she was handsome, that she was in her way a tangible
value. It was at least as marked, nevertheless, that
he derived none from similar conditions, so far as
they were similar, in his other child. Poor Marian
might be handsome, but he certainly did n't care.
The hitch here of course was that, with whatever
beauty, her sister, widowed and almost in want, with
four bouncing children, had no such measure. She
asked him the next thing how long he had been in his
actual quarters, though aware of how little it mat
tered, how little any answer he might make would

9

THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

probably have in common with the truth. She failed
in fact to notice his answer, truthful or not, already
occupied as she was with what she had on her own
side to say to him. This was really what had made
her wait — what superseded the small remainder of
her resentment at his constant practical impertinence ;
the result of all of which was that within a minute she
had brought it out. "Yes — even now I 'm willing to
go with you. I don't know what you may have wished
to say to me, and even if you had n't written you
would within a day or two have heard from me.
Things have happened, and I've only waited, for
seeing you, till I should be quite sure. I am quite
sure. I '11 go with you."

It produced an effect. "Go with me where ?"
"Anywhere. I'll stay with you. Even here." She
had taken off her gloves and, as if she had arrived
with her plan, she sat down.

Lionel Croy hung about in his disengaged way —
hovered there as if looking, in consequence of her
words, for a pretext to back out easily : on which she
immediately saw she had discounted, as it might be
called, what he had himself been preparing. He
wished her not to come to him, still less to settle with
him, and had sent for her to give her up with some
style and state ; a part of the beauty of which, how
ever, was to have been his sacrifice to her own detach
ment. There was no style, no state, unless she wished
to forsake him. His idea had accordingly been to sur
render her to her wish with all nobleness ; it had by
no means been to have positively to keep her off. She
cared, however, not a straw for his embarrassment —

10

BOOK FIRST

feeling how little, on her own part, she was moved by
charity. She had seen him, first and last, in so many
attitudes that she could now deprive him quite with
out compunction of the luxury of a new one. Yet she
felt the disconcerted gasp in his tone as he said : "Oh
my child, I can never consent to that ! "

"What then are you going to do ?"

"I'm turning it over," said Lionel Croy. "You
may imagine if I 'm not thinking."

"Have n't you thought then," his daughter asked,
"of what I speak of? I mean of my being ready."

Standing before her with his hands behind him
and his legs a little apart, he swayed slightly to and
fro, inclined toward her as if rising on his toes. It
had an effect of conscientious deliberation. "No —
I have n't. I could n't. I would n't." It was so re
spectable a show that she felt afresh, and with the
memory of their old despair, the despair at home,
how little his appearance ever by any chance told
about him. His plausibility had been the heaviest
of her mother's crosses; inevitably so much more
present to the world than whatever it was that was
horrid — thank God they did n't really know ! —
that he had done. He had positively been, in his way,
by the force of his particular type, a terrible husband
not to live with; his type reflecting so invidiously on
the woman who had found him distasteful. Had
this thereby not kept directly present to Kate herself
that it might, on some sides, prove no light thing for
her to leave uncompanion'd a parent with such a face
and such a manner ? Yet if there was much she
neither knew nor dreamed of it passed between them

II

I

THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

at this very moment that he was quite familiar with
himself as the subject of such quandaries. If he
recognised his younger daughter's happy aspect as
a tangible value, he had from the first still more ex
actly appraised every point of his own. The great
wonder was not that in spite of everything these
points had helped him; the great wonder was that
they had n't helped him more. However, it was, to
its eternal recurrent tune, helping him all the while;
her drop into patience with him showed how it was
helping him at this moment. She saw the next instant
precisely the line he would take. " Do you really ask
me to believe you've been making up your mind to
that?"

She had to consider her own line. "I don't think
I care, papa, what you believe. I never, for that
matter, think of you as believing anything; hardly
more," she permitted herself to add, "than I ever
think of you as yourself believed. I don't know you,
father, you see."

"And it's your idea that you may make that up ?"

"Oh dear, no; not at all. That's no part of the
question. If I haven't understood you by this time
I never shall, and it does n't matter. It has seemed
to me you may be lived with, but not that you may be
understood. Of course I 've not the least idea how
you get on."

"I don't get on," Mr. Croy almost gaily replied.

His daughter took the place in again, and it might
well have seemed odd that with so little to meet the
eye there should be so much to show. What showed
was the ugliness — so positive and palpable that it

12

BOOK FIRST

was somehow sustaining. It was a medium, a setting,
and to that extent, after all, a dreadful sign of life;
so that it fairly gave point to her answer. "Oh I beg
your pardon. You flourish."

"Do you throw it up at me again," he pleasantly
put to her, "that I Ve not made away with myself?"

She treated the question as needing no reply; she
sat there for real things. "You know how all our
anxieties, under mamma's will, have come out. She
had still less to leave than she feared. We don't know
how we lived. It all makes up about two hundred a
year for Marian, and two for me, but I give up a hun
dred to Marian."

"Oh you weak thing!" her father sighed as from
depths of enlightened experience.

"For you and me together," she went on, "the
other hundred would do something."

"And what would do the rest?"

" Can you yourself do nothing ? "

He gave her a look; then, slipping his hands into
his pockets and turning away, stood for a little at
the window she had left open. She said nothing more
— she had placed him there with that question, and
the silence lasted a minute, broken by the call of an
appealing costermonger, which came in with the
mild March air, with the shabby sunshine, fearfully
unbecoming to the room, and with the small homely
hum of Chirk Street. Presently he moved nearer, but
as if her question had quite dropped. "I don't see
what has so suddenly wound you up."

"I should have thought you might perhaps guess.
Let me at any rate tell you. Aunt Maud has made

13

THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

me a proposal. But she has also made me a condition.
She wants to keep me."

"And what in the world else could she possibly
want ? "

"Oh I don't know — many things. I'm not so
precious a capture," the girl a little dryly explained.
"No one has ever wanted to keep me before."

Looking always what was proper, her father looked
now still more surprised than interested. "You've
not had proposals ? " He spoke as if that were incred
ible of Lionel Croy's daughter; as if indeed such an
admission scarce consorted, even in filial intimacy,
with her high spirit and general form.

"Not from rich relations. She's extremely kind
to me, but it 's time, she says, that we should under
stand each other."

Mr. Croy fully assented. "Of course it is — high
time; and I can quite imagine what she means by it."

"Are you very sure ?"

"Oh perfectly. She means that she'll 'do' for you
handsomely if you '11 break off all relations with me.
You speak of her condition. Her condition 's of course
that."

"Well then," said Kate, "it's what has wound me
up. Here I am."

He showed with a gesture how thoroughly he had
taken it in ; after which, within a few seconds, he had
quite congruously turned the situation about. "Do
you really suppose me in a position to justify your
throwing yourself upon me ? "

She waited a little, but when she spoke it was clear.
"Yes."

BOOK FIRST

"Well then, you're of feebler intelligence than I
should have ventured to suppose you."

"Why so? You live. You flourish. You bloom."

"Ah how you've all always hated me!" he mur
mured with a pensive gaze again at the window.

"No one could be less of a mere cherished mem
ory," she declared as if she had not heard him.
"You're an actual person, if there ever was one. We
agreed just now that you're beautiful. You strike
me, you know, as — in your own way — much more
firm on your feet than I. Don't put it to me therefore
as monstrous that the fact that we 're after all parent
and child should at present in some manner count
for us. My idea has been that it should have some
effect for each of us. I don't at all, as I told you just
now," she pursued, "make out your life; but what
ever it is I hereby offer to accept it. And, on my side,
I '11 do everything I can for you."

"I see," said Lionel Croy. Then with the sound
of extreme relevance: "And what can you?" She
only, at this, hesitated, and he took up her silence.
"You can describe yourself — to yourself — as, in a
fine flight, giving up your aunt for me; but what
good, I should like to know, would your fine flight
do me ? " As she still said nothing he developed a
little. "We're not possessed of so much, at this
charming pass, please to remember, as that we can
afford not to take hold of any perch held out to us.
I like the way you talk, my dear, about * giving up' !
One does n't give up the use of a spoon because one 's
reduced to living on broth. And your spoon, that is
your aunt, please consider, is partly mine as well."

15

THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

She rose now, as if in sight of the term of her effort,
in sight of the futility and the weariness of many
things, and moved back to the poor little glass with
which she had communed before. She retouched here
again the poise of her hat, and this brought to her
father's lips another remark — in which impatience,
however, had already been replaced by a free flare
of appreciation. " Oh you 're all right ! Don't muddle
yourself up with me!"

His daughter turned round to him. "The con
dition Aunt Maud makes is that I shall have ab
solutely nothing to do with you ; never see you, nor
speak nor write to you, never go near you nor make
you a sign, nor hold any sort of communication with
you. What she requires is that you shall simply cease
to exist for me."

He had always seemed — it was one of the marks
of what they called the "unspeakable" in him — to
walk a little more on his toes, as if for jauntiness,
under the touch of offence. Nothing, however, was
more wonderful than what he sometimes would take
for offence, unless it might be what he sometimes
would n't. He walked at any rate on his toes now.
"A very proper requirement of your Aunt Maud, my
dear — I don't hesitate to say it ! " Yet as this, much
as she had seen, left her silent at first from what might
have been a sense of sickness, he had time to go on :
"That's her condition then. But what are her pro
mises ? Just what does she engage to do ? You must
work it, you know."

"You mean make her feel," Kate asked after a
moment, " how much I 'm attached to you ? "

16

BOOK FIRST

"Well, what a cruel invidious treaty it is for you
to sign. I 'm a poor ruin of an old dad to make a
stand about giving up — I quite agree. But I 'm not,
after all, quite the old ruin not to get something for
giving up."

"Oh I think her idea," said Kate almost gaily
now, "is that I shall get a great deal."

He met her with his inimitable amenity. " But does
she give you the items ? "

The girl went through the show. "More or less,
I think. But many of them are things I dare say I
may take for granted — things women can do for each
other and that you would n't understand."

"There's nqthing I understand so well, always, as
the things I need n't ! But what I want to do, you
see," he went on, " is to put it to your conscience that
you 've an admirable opportunity; and that it's more
over one for which, after all, damn you, you 've really
to thank me"

"I confess I don't see," Kate observed, "what my
' conscience ' has to do with it."

"Then, my dear girl, you ought simply to be
ashamed of yourself. Do you know what you 're a
proof of, all you hard hollow people together ? " He
put the question with a charming air of sudden
spiritual heat. "Of the deplorably superficial moral
ity of the age. The family sentiment, in our vulgarised
brutalised life, has gone utterly to pot. There was a
day when a man like me — by which I mean a parent
like me — would have been for a daughter like you
quite a distinct value; what's called in the business
world, I believe, an 'asset.'" He continued sociably

THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

to make it out. " I 'm not talking only of what you
might, with the right feeling, do for me, but of what
you might — it 's what I call your opportunity — do
with me. Unless indeed," he the next moment im-
perturbably threw off, "they come a good deal to
the same thing. Your duty as well as your chance,
if you 're capable of seeing it, is to use me. Show
family feeling by seeing what I 'm good for. If you
had it as / have it you 'd see I 'm still good — well,
for a lot of things. There 's in fact, my dear," Mr.
Croy wound up, "a coach-and-four to be got out of
me." His lapse, or rather his climax, failed a little
of effect indeed through an undue precipitation of
memory. Something his daughter had said came back
to him. "You've settled to give away half your little
inheritance ? "

Her hesitation broke into laughter. "No — I have
n't 'settled' anything."

"But you mean practically to let Marian collar
it ? " They stood there face to face, but she so denied
herself to his challenge that he could only go on.
"You've a view of three hundred a year for her in
addition to what her husband left her with ? Is that,"
the remote progenitor of such wantonness audibly
wondered, "your morality?"

Kate found her answer without trouble. "Is it
your idea that I should give you everything ? "

The "everything" clearly struck him — to the
point even of determining the tone of his reply. "Far
from it. How can you ask that when I refuse what you
tell me you came to offer ? Make of my idea what you
can ; I think I 've sufficiently expressed it, and it 's at

18

BOOK FIRST

any rate to take or to leave. It 's the only one, I may
nevertheless add; it's the basket with all my eggs.
It 's my conception, in short, of your duty."

The girl's tired smile watched the word as if it had
taken on a small grotesque visibility. "You're won
derful on such subjects! I think I should leave you
in no doubt," she pursued, "that if I were to sign my
aunt's agreement I should carry it out, in honour, to
the letter."

"Rather, my own love! It's just your honour that
I appeal to. The only way to play the game is to
play it. There's no limit to what your aunt can do
for you."

" Do you mean in the way of marrying me ? "

"What else should I mean? Marry properly — "

"And then ?" Kate asked as he hung fire.

"And then — well, I will talk with you. I'll re
sume relations."

She looked about her and picked up her parasol.
" Because you 're not so afraid of any one else in the
world as you are of her ? My husband, if I should
marry, would be at the worst less of a terror ? If that 's
what you mean there may be something in it. But
does n't it depend a little also on what you mean by
my getting a proper one ? However," Kate added
as she picked out the frill of her little umbrella, "I
don't suppose your idea of him is quite that he should
persuade you to live with us."

" Dear no — not a bit." He spoke as not resenting
either the fear or the hope she imputed; met both
imputations in fact with a sort of intellectual relief.
"I place the case for you wholly in your aunt's hands.

19

THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

I take her view with my eyes shut; I accept in all
confidence any man she selects. If he 's good enough
for her — elephantine snob as she is — he 's good
enough for me; and quite in spite of the fact that
she '11 be sure to select one who can be trusted to be
nasty to me. My only interest is in your doing what
she wants. You shan't be so beastly poor, my darling,"
Mr. Croy declared, "if I can help it."

"Well then good-bye, papa," the girl said after
a reflexion on this that had perceptibly ended for her
in a renunciation of further debate. "Of course you
understand that it may be for long."

Her companion had hereupon one of his finest in
spirations. "Why not frankly for ever? You must
do me the justice to see that I don't do things, that
I 've never done them, by halves — that if I offer you
to efface myself it 's for the final fatal sponge I ask,
well saturated and well applied."

She turned her handsome quiet face upon him at
such length that it might indeed have been for the
last time. "I don't know what you're like."

"No more do I, my dear. I've spent my life in
trying in vain to discover. Like nothing — more 's
the pity. If there had been many of us and we could
have found each other out there 's no knowing what
we might n't have done. But it does n't matter
now. Good-bye, love." He looked even not sure of
what she would wish him to suppose on the sub
ject of a kiss, yet also not embarrassed by his un
certainty.

She forbore in fact for a moment longer to clear
it up. " I wish there were some one here who might

20

BOOK FIRST

serve — for any contingency — as a witness that I
have put it to you that I 'm ready to come."

"Would you like me," her father asked, " to call
the landlady?"

"You may not believe me," she pursued, "but I
came really hoping you might have found some way.
I'm very sorry at all events to leave you unwell."
He turned away from her on this and, as he had done
before, took refuge, by the window, in a stare at the
street. " Let me put it — unfortunately without a
witness," she added after a moment, "that there's
only one word you really need speak."

When he took these words up it was still with his
back to her. " If I don't strike you as having already
spoken it our time has been singularly wasted."

"I'll engage with you in respect to my aunt ex
actly to what she wants of me in respect to you. She
wants me to choose. Very well, I will choose. I '11
wash my hands of her for you to just that tune."

He at last brought himself round. "Do you know,
dear, you make me sick ? I 've tried to be clear, and
it is n't fair."

But she passed this over; she was too visibly sin
cere. "Father!"

" I don't quite see what 5s the matter with you," he
said, "and if you can't pull yourself together I'll
— upon my honour — take you in hand. Put you
into a cab and deliver you again safe at Lancaster
Gate."

She was really absent, distant. "Father."

It was too much, and he met it sharply. "Well ?"

"Strange as it may be to you to hear me say it,

21

THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

there's a good you can do me and a help you can
render."

" Is n't it then exactly what I 've been trying to
make you feel ? "

"Yes," she answered patiently, "but so in the
wrong way. I 'm perfectly honest in what I say, and
I know what I 'm talking about. It is n't that I '11
pretend I could have believed a month ago in any
thing to call aid or support from you. The case is
changed — that's what has happened; my difficulty is
a new one. But even now it 's not a question of any
thing I should ask you in a way to 'do.' It's simply
a question of your not turning me away — taking
yourself out of my life. It 's simply a question of your
saying : ' Yes then, since you will, we '11 stand together.
We won't worry in advance about how or where ; we '11
have a faith and find a way/ That's all — that
would be the good you 'd do me. I should have you,
and it would be for my benefit. Do you see ? "

If he did n't it was n't for want of looking at her
hard. "The matter with you is that you're in love,
and that your aunt knows and — for reasons, I 'm
sure, perfect — hates and opposes it. Well she may !
It 's a matter in which I trust her with my eyes shut.
Go, please." Though he spoke not in anger — rather
in infinite sadness — he fairly turned her out. Before
she took it up he had, as the fullest expression of what
he felt, opened the door of the room. He had fairly,
in his deep disapproval, a generous compassion to
spare. "I'm sorry for her, deluded woman, if she
builds on you."

Kate stood a moment in the draught. "She's not
22

BOOK FIRST

the person / pity most, for, deluded in many ways
though she may be, she 's not the person who 's most
so. I mean," she explained, "if it's a question of
what you call building on me."

He took it as if what she meant might be other than
her description of it. "You're deceiving two persons
then, Mrs. Lowder and somebody else?"

She shook her head with detachment. "I've no
intention of that sort with respect to any one now —
to Mrs. Lowder least of all. If you fail me" — she
seemed to make it out for herself — "that has the
merit at least that it simplifies. I shall go my way —
as I see my way."

" Your way, you mean then, will be to marry some
blackguard without a penny ? "

"You demand a great deal of satisfaction," she ob
served, "for the little you give."

It brought him up again before her as with a sense
that she was not to be hustled, and though he glared
at her a little this had long been the practical limit
to his general power of objection. "If you're base
enough to incur your aunt's reprobation you 're base
enough for my argument. What, if you 're not think
ing of an utterly improper person, do your speeches
to me signify ? Who is the beggarly sneak ? " he went
on as her response failed.

Her response, when it came, was cold but distinct.
" He has every disposition to make the best of you. He
only wants in fact to be kind to you."

"Then he must be an ass! And how in the world
can you consider it to improve him for me," her
father pursued, "that he's also destitute and impos-

23

THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

sible ? There are boobies and boobies even — the
right and the wrong — and you appear to have care
fully picked out one of the wrong. Your aunt knows
them, by good fortune ; I perfectly trust, as I tell you,
her judgement for them ; and you may take it from
me once for all that I won't hear of any one of whom
she won't." Which led up to his last word. "If you
should really defy us both — ! "

"Well, papa?"

"Well, my sweet child, I think that — reduced to
insignificance as you may fondly believe me — I
should still not be quite without some way of making
you regret it."

She had a pause, a grave one, but not, as appeared,
that she might measure this danger. " If I should n't
do it, you know, it would n't be because I 'm afraid
of you."

"Oh if you don't do it," he retorted, "you may be
as bold as you like!"

" Then you can do nothing at all for me ? "

He showed her, this time unmistakeably — it was
before her there on the landing, at the top of the
tortuous stairs and in the midst of the strange smell
that seemed to cling to them — how vain her ap
peal remained. "I've never pretended to do more
than my duty; I've given you the best and the clear
est advice." And then came up the spring that
moved him. "If it only displeases you, you can go
to Marian to be consoled." What he could n't for
give was her dividing with Marian her scant share of
the provision their mother had been able to leave
them. She should have divided it with him.

24

II

SHE had gone to Mrs. Lowder on her mother's death
— gone with an effort the strain and pain of which
made her at present, as she recalled them, reflect on
the long way she had travelled since then. There had
been nothing else to do — not a penny in the other
house, nothing but unpaid bills that had gathered
thick while its mistress lay mortally ill, and the ad
monition that there was nothing she must attempt
to raise money on, since everything belonged to the
"estate." How the estate would turn out at best
presented itself as a mystery altogether gruesome ; it
had proved in fact since then a residuum a trifle less
scant than, with her sister, she had for some weeks
feared; but the girl had had at the beginning rather
a wounded sense of its being watched on behalf of
Marian and her children. What on earth was it sup
posed that she wanted to do to it ? She wanted in
truth only to give up — to abandon her own interest,
which she doubtless would already have done had n't
the point been subject to Aunt Maud's sharp inter
vention. Aunt Maud's intervention was all sharp
now, and the other point, the great one, was that it
was to be, in this light, either all put up with or all
declined. Yet at the winter's end, nevertheless, she
could scarce have said what stand she conceived she
had taken. It would n't be the first time she had seen
herself obliged to accept with smothered irony other
people's interpretation of her conduct. She often

25

THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

ended by giving up to them — it seemed really the
way to live — the version that met their convenience.
The tall rich heavy house at Lancaster Gate, on
the other side of the Park and the long South Ken
sington stretches, had figured to her, through child
hood, through girlhood, as the remotest limit of her
vague young world. It was further off and more occa
sional than anything else in the comparatively com
pact circle in which she revolved, and seemed, by a
rigour early marked, to be reached through long,
straight, discouraging vistas, perfect telescopes of
streets, and which kept lengthening and straightening,
whereas almost everything else in life was either at the
worst roundabout Cromwell Road or at the furthest
in the nearer parts of Kensington Gardens. Mrs.
Lowder was her only "real" aunt, not the wife of an
uncle, and had been thereby, both in ancient days and
when the greater trouble came, the person, of all per
sons, properly to make some sign; in accord with
which our young woman's feeling was founded on the
impression, quite cherished for years, that the signs
made across the interval just mentioned had never
been really in the note of the situation. The main
office of this relative for the young Croys — apart
from giving them their fixed measure of social great
ness — had struck them as being to form them to a
conception of what they were not to expect. When
Kate came to think matters over with wider know
ledge, she failed quite to see how Aunt Maud could
have been different — she had rather perceived by
this time how many other things might have been;
yet she also made out that if they had all consciously

26

BOOK FIRST

lived under a liability to the chill breath of ultima
Thule they could n't, either, on the facts, very well
have done less. What in the event appeared estab
lished was that if Mrs. Lowder had disliked them she
yet had n't disliked them so much as they supposed.
It had at any rate been for the purpose of showing how
she struggled with her aversion that she sometimes
came to see them, that she at regular periods invited
them to her house and in short, as it now looked, kept
them along on the terms that would best give her sister
the perennial luxury of a grievance. This sister, poor
Mrs. Croy, the girl knew, had always judged her re
sentfully, and had brought them up, Marian, the boys
and herself, to the idea of a particular attitude, for
signs of the practice of which they watched each other
with awe. The attitude was to make plain to Aunt
Maud, with the same regularity as her invitations,
that they sufficed — thanks awfully — to themselves.
But the ground of it, Kate lived to discern, was that
this was only because she did n't suffice to them. The
little she offered was to be accepted under protest,
yet not really because it was excessive. It wounded
them — there was the rub ! — because it fell short.
The number of new things our young lady looked
out on from the high south window that hung over
the Park — this number was so great (though some
of the things were only old ones altered and, as the
phrase was of other matters, done up) that life at pre
sent turned to her view from week to week more and
more the face of a striking and distinguished stranger.
She had reached a great age — for it quite seemed to
her that at twenty-five it was late to reconsider, and

27

THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

her most general sense was a shade of regret that she
had n't known earlier. The world was different —
whether for worse or for better — from her rudiment
ary readings, and it gave her the feeling of a wasted
past. If she had only known sooner she might have
arranged herself more to meet it. She made at all
events discoveries every day, some of which were
about herself and others about other persons. Two of
these — one under each head — more particularly
engaged, in alternation, her anxiety. She saw as she
had never seen before how material things spoke to
her. She saw, and she blushed to see, that if in con
trast with some of its old aspects life now affected her
as a dress successfully "done up," this was exactly by
reason of the trimmings an<i lace, was a matter of
ribbons and silk and velvet. She had a dire access
ibility to pleasure from such sources. She liked the
charming quarters her aunt had assigned her —
liked them literally more than she had in all her other
days liked anything; and nothing could have been
more uneasy than her suspicion of her relative's view
of this truth. Her relative was prodigious — she had
never done her relative justice. These larger con
ditions all tasted of her, from morning till night; but
she was a person in respect to whom the growth of
acquaintance could only — strange as it might seem
— keep your heart in your mouth.

The girl's second great discovery was that, so far
from having been for Mrs. Lowder a subject of super
ficial consideration, the blighted home in Lexham
Gardens had haunted her nights and her days. Kate
had spent, all winter, hours of observation that were

28

BOOK FIRST

not less pointed for being spent alone; recent events,
which her mourning explained, assured her a measure
of isolation, and it was in the isolation above all that
her neighbour's influence worked. Sitting far down
stairs Aunt Maud was yet a presence from which a
sensitive niece could feel herself extremely under press
ure. She knew herself now, the sensitive niece, as
having been marked from far back. She knew more
than she could have told you, by the upstairs fire, in a
whole dark December afternoon. She knew so much
that her knowledge was what fairly kept her there,
making her at times circulate more endlessly between
the small silk-covered sofa that stood for her in the
firelight and the great grey map of Middlesex spread
beneath her lookout. To go down, to forsake her
refuge, was to meet some of her discoveries halfway,
to have to face them or fly before them ; whereas they
were at such a height only like the rumble of a far-
off siege heard in the provisioned citadel. She had
almost liked, in these weeks, what had created her
suspense and her stress: the loss of her mother, the
submersion of her father, the discomfort of her sister,
the confirmation of their shrunken prospects, the
certainty, in especial, of her having to recognise that
should she behave, as she called it, decently — that is
still do something for others — she would be herself
wholly without supplies. She held that she had a
right to sadness and stillness; she nursed them for
their postponing power. What they mainly post
poned was the question of a surrender, though she
could n't yet have said exactly of what: a 'general sur
render of everything — that was at moments the way

29

THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

it presented itself — to Aunt Maud's looming "per
sonality." It was by her personality that Aunt Maud
was prodigious, and the great mass of it loomed be
cause, in the thick, the foglike air of her arranged
existence, there were parts doubtless magnified and
parts certainly vague. They represented at all events
alike, the dim and the distinct, a strong will and a
high hand. It was perfectly present to Kate that she
might be devoured, and she compared herself to a
trembling kid, kept apart a day or two till her turn
should come, but sure sooner or later to be introduced
into the cage of the lioness.

The cage was Aunt Maud's own room, her office,
her counting-house, her battlefield, her especial
scene, in fine, of action, situated on the ground-floor,
opening from the main hall and figuring rather to our
young woman on exit and entrance as a guard-house
or a toll-gate. The lioness waited — the kid had at
least that consciousness ; was aware of the neighbour
hood of a morsel she had reason to suppose tender.
She would have been meanwhile a wonderful lioness
for a show, an extraordinary figure in a cage or any
where; majestic, magnificent, high-coloured, all
brilliant gloss, perpetual satin, twinkling bugles and
flashing gems, with a lustre of agate eyes, a sheen of
raven hair, a polish of complexion that was like that
of well-kept china and that — as if the skin were toe
tight — told especially at curves and corners. Her
niece had a quiet name for her — she kept it quiet :
thinking of her, with a free fancy, as somehow typic
ally insular, she talked to herself of Britannia of the
Market Place — Britannia unmistakeable but with a

30

BOOK FIRST

pen on her ear — and felt she should not be happy till
she might on some occasion add to the rest of the
panoply a helmet, a shield, a trident and a ledger. It
was n't in truth, however, that the forces with which,
as Kate felt, she would have to deal were those most
suggested by an image simple and broad; she was
learning after all each day to know her companion,
and what she had already most perceived was the mis
take of trusting to easy analogies. There was a whole
side of Britannia, the side of her florid philistinism,
her plumes and her train, her fantastic furniture and
heaving bosom, the false gods of her taste and false
notes of her talk, the sole contemplation of which
would be dangerously misleading. She was a com
plex and subtle Britannia, as passionate as she was
practical, with a reticule for her prejudices as deep as
that other pocket, the pocket full of coins stamped in
her image, that the world best knew her by. She car
ried on in short, behind her aggressive and defensive
front, operations determined by her wisdom. It was
in fact as a besieger, we have hinted, that our young
lady, in the provisioned citadel, had for the present
most to think of her, and what made her formidable
in this character was that she was unscrupulous and
immoral. So at all events in silent sessions and a
youthful off-hand way Kate conveniently pictured
her : what this sufficiently represented being that her
weight was in the scale of certain dangers — those
dangers that, by our showing, made the younger
woman linger and lurk above, while the elder, below,
both militant and diplomatic, covered as much of the
ground as possible. Yet what were the dangers, after

31

THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

all, but just the dangers of life and of London ? Mrs.
Lowder was London, was life — the roar of the siege
and the thick of the fray. There were some things,
after all, of which Britannia was afraid; but Aunt
Maud was afraid of nothing — not even, it would ap
pear, of arduous thought.

These impressions, none the less, Kate kept so
much to herself that she scarce shared them with
poor Marian, the ostensible purpose of her frequent
visits to whom yet continued to be to talk over every
thing. One of her reasons for holding off from the
last concession to Aunt Maud was that she might
be the more free to commit herself to this so much
nearer and so much less fortunate relative, with whom
Aunt Maud would have almost nothing direct to do.
The sharpest pinch of her state, meanwhile, was
exactly that all intercourse with her sister had the
effect of casting down her courage and tying her
hands, adding daily to her sense of the part, not
always either uplifting or sweetening, that the bond
of blood might play in one's life. She was face to face
with it now, with the bond of blood ; the conscious
ness of it was what she seemed most clearly to have
"come into" by the death of her mother, much of
that consciousness as her mother had absorbed and
carried away. Her haunting harassing father, her
menacing uncompromising aunt, her portionless little
nephews and nieces, were figures that caused the
chord of natural piety superabundantly to vibrate.
Her manner of putting it to herself — but more espe
cially in respect to Marian — was that she saw what
you might be brought to by the cultivation of con-

32

BOOK FIRST

sanguinity. She had taken, in the old days, as she
supposed, the measure of this liability; those being
the days when, as the second-born, she had thought
no one in the world so pretty as Marian, no one so
charming, so clever, so assured in advance of happi
ness and success. The view was different now, but
her attitude had been obliged, for many reasons, to
show as the same. The subject of this estimate was
no longer pretty, as the reason for thinking her clever
was no longer plain; yet, bereaved, disappointed,
demoralised, querulous, she was all the more sharply
and insistently Kate's elder and Kate's own. Kate's
most constant feeling about her was that she would
make her, Kate, do things ; and always, in comfortless
Chelsea, at the door of the small house the small rent
of which she could n't help having on her mind, she
fatalistically asked herself, before going in, which
thing it would probably be this time. She noticed
with profundity that disappointment made people
selfish ; she marvelled at the serenity — it was the
poor woman's only one — of what Marian took for
granted : her own state of abasement as the second-
born, her life reduced to mere inexhaustible sister
hood. She existed in that view wholly for the small
house in Chelsea; the moral of which moreover, of
course, was that the more you gave yourself the less
of you was left. There were always people to snatch at
you, and it would never occur to them that they were
eating you up. They did that without tasting.

There was no such misfortune, or at any rate no
such discomfort, she further reasoned, as to be formed
it once for being and for seeing. You always saw,

33

THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

in this case something else than what you were, and
you got in consequence none of the peace of your
condition. However, as she never really let Marian
see what she was Marian might well not have been
aware that she herself saw. Kate was accordingly
to her own vision not a hypocrite of virtue, for she
gave herself up ; but she was a hypocrite of stupidity,
for she kept to herself everything that was not herself.
What she most kept was the particular sentiment with
which she watched her sister instinctively neglect
nothing that would make for her submission to their
aunt; a state of the spirit that perhaps marked most
sharply how poor you might become when you minded
so much the absence of wealth. It was through Kate
that Aunt Maud should be worked, and nothing mat
tered less than what might become of Kate in the
process. Kate was to burn her ships in short, so that
Marian should profit; and Marian's desire to profit
was quite oblivious of a dignity that had after all
its reasons — if it had only understood them — for
keeping itself a little stiff. Kate, to be properly stiff
for both of them, would therefore have had to be
selfish, have had to prefer an ideal of behaviour —
than which nothing ever was more selfish — to the
possibility of stray crumbs for the four small creat
ures. The tale of Mrs. Lowder's disgust at her elder
niece's marriage to Mr. Condrip had lost little of its
point; the incredibly fatuous behaviour of Mr. Con-
drip, the parson of a dull suburban parish, with a
saintly profile which was always in evidence, being
so distinctly on record to keep criticism consistent.
He had presented his profile on system, having, good-

34

BOOK FIRST

ness knew, nothing else to present — nothing at all
to full-face the world with, no imagination of the pro
priety of living and minding his business. Criticism
had remained on Aunt Maud's part consistent enough ;
she was not a person to regard such proceedings as
less of a mistake for having acquired more of the
privilege of pathos. She had n't been forgiving, and
the only approach she made to overlooking them was
by overlooking — with the surviving delinquent —
the solid little phalanx that now represented them.
Of the two sinister ceremonies that she lumped to
gether, the marriage and the interment, she had been
present at the former, just as she had sent Marian
before it a liberal cheque; but this had not been for
her more than the shadow of an admitted link with
Mrs. Condrip's course. She disapproved of clamor
ous children for whom there was no prospect; she
disapproved of weeping widows who could n't make
their errors good ; and she had thus put within Mari
an's reach one of the few luxuries left when so much
else had gone, an easy pretext for a constant griev
ance. Kate Croy remembered well what their mother,
in a different quarter, had made of it; and it was
Marian's marked failure to pluck the fruit of resent
ment that committed them as sisters to an almost
equal fellowship in abjection. If the theory was that,
yes, alas, one of the pair had ceased to be noticed, but
that the other was noticed enough to make up for it,
who would fail to see that Kate could n't separate
herself without a cruel pride ? That lesson became
sharp for our young lady the day after her interview
with her father.

35

THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

"I can't imagine," Marian on this occasion said
to her, "how you can think of anything else in the
world but the horrid way we're situated."

"And, pray, how do you .know," Kate enquired
in reply, "anything about my thoughts? It seems
to me I give you sufficient proof of how much I
think of you. I don't really, my dear, know what
else you 've to do with ! "

Marian's retort on this was a stroke as to which
she had supplied herself with several kinds of pre
paration, but there was none the less something of an
unexpected note in its promptitude. She had foreseen
her sister's general fear ; but here, ominously, was the
special one. "Well, your own business is of course
your own business, and you may say there 's no one
less in a position than I to preach to you. But, all the
same, if you wash your hands of me for ever in con
sequence, I won't, for this once, keep back that I
don't consider you 've a right, as we all stand, to throw
yourself away."

It was after the children's dinner, which was also
their mother's, but which their aunt mostly con
trived to keep from ever becoming her own luncheon ;
and the two young women were still in the presence of
the crumpled table-cloth, the dispersed pinafores, the
scraped dishes, the lingering odour of boiled food.
Kate had asked with ceremony if she might put up a
window a little, and Mrs. Condrip had replied without
it that she might do as she liked. She often received
such enquiries as if they reflected in a manner on the
pure essence of her little ones. The four had retired,
with much movement and noise, under imperfect

36

BOOK FIRST

control of the small Irish governess whom their aunt
had hunted up for them and whose brooding resolve
not to prolong so uncrowned a martyrdom she already
more than suspected. Their mother had become for
Kate — who took it just for the effect of being
their mother — quite a different thing from the mild
Marian of the past : Mr. Condrip's widow expansively
obscured that image. She was little more than a
ragged relic, a plain prosaic result of him — as if she
had somehow been pulled through him as through an
obstinate funnel, only to be left crumpled and useless
and with nothing in her but what he accounted for.
She had grown red and almost fat, which were not
happy signs of mourning; less and less like any Croy,
particularly a Croy in trouble, and sensibly like her
husband's two unmarried sisters, who came to see
her, in Kate's view, much too often and stayed too
long, with the consequence of inroads upon the tea
and bread-and-butter — matters as to which Kate,
not unconcerned with the tradesmen's books, had
feelings. About them moreover Marian was touchy,
and her nearer relative, who observed and weighed
things, noted as an oddity that she would have taken
any reflexion on them as a reflexion on herself. If
that was what marriage necessarily did to you Kate
Croy would have questioned marriage. It was at any
rate a grave example of what a man — and such a
man ! — might make of a woman. She could see how
the Condrip pair pressed their brother's widow on the
subject of Aunt Maud — who was n't, after all, their
aunt; made her, over their interminable cups, chatter
and even swagger about Lancaster Gate, made her

37

THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

more vulgar than it had seemed written that any Croy
could possibly become on such a subject. They laid
it down, they rubbed it in, that Lancaster Gate was
to be kept in sight, and that she, Kate, was to keep it ;
so that, curiously, or at all events sadly, our young
woman was sure of being in her own person more
permitted to them as an object of comment than they
would in turn ever be permitted to herself. The
beauty of which too was that Marian did n't love
them. But they were Condrips — they had grown
near the rose; they were almost like Bertie and
Maudie, like Kitty and Guy. They talked of the
dead to her, which Kate never did ; it being a relation
in which Kate could but mutely listen. She could n't
indeed too often say to herself that if that was what
marriage did to you — ! It may easily be guessed
therefore that the ironic light of such reserves fell
straight across the field of Marian's warning. "I
don't quite see," she answered, "where in particular
it strikes you that my danger lies. I 'm not conscious,
I assure you, of the least disposition to 'throw' myself
anywhere. I feel that for the present I 've been quite
sufficiently thrown."

"You don't feel" — Marian brought it all out —
"that you'd like to marry Merton Densher ?"

Kate took a moment to meet this enquiry. "Is it
your idea that if I should feel so I would be bound to
give you notice, so that you might step in and head me
off? Is that your idea ?" the girl asked. Then as her
sister also had a pause, "I don't know what makes
you talk of Mr. Densher," she observed.

"I talk of him just because you don't. That you

38

BOOK FIRST

never do, in spite of what I know — that 's what
makes me think of him. Or rather perhaps it's what
makes me think of you. If you don't know by this
time what I hope for you, what I dream of — my at
tachment being what it is — it 's no use my attempting
to tell you." But Marian had in fact warmed to her
work, and Kate was sure she had discussed Mr.
Densher with the Miss Condrips. "If I name that
person I suppose it's because I'm so afraid of him.
If you want really to know, he fills me with terror. If
you want really to know, in fact, I dislike him as much
as I dread him."

"And yet don't think it dangerous to abuse him to
me?"

"Yes," Mrs. Condrip confessed, "I do think it
dangerous ; but how can I speak of him otherwise ?
I dare say, I admit, that I should n't speak of him at
all. Only I do want you for once, as I said just now,
to know."

"To know what, my dear ?"

"That I should regard it," Marian promptly re
turned, "as far and away the worst thing that has
happened to us yet."

" Do you mean because he has n't money ? "

"Yes, for one thing. And because I don't believe in
him."

Kate was civil but mechanical. "What do you mean
by not believing in him ? "

"Well, being sure he '11 never get it. And you must
have it. You shall have it."

"To give it to you ?"

Marian met her with a readiness that was prac-
39

THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

tically pert. "To have it, first. Not at any rate to
go on not having it. Then we should see."

"We should indeed !" said Kate Croy. It was talk
of a kind she loathed, but if Marian chose to be vulgar
what was one to do ? It made her think of the Miss
Condrips with renewed aversion. "I like the way you
arrange things — I like what you take for granted.
If it 's so easy for us to marry men who want us to
scatter gold, I wonder we any of us do anything else.
I don't see so many of them about, nor what interest I
might ever have for them. You live, my dear," she
presently added, "in a world of vain thoughts."

" Not so much as you, Kate ; for I see what I see and
you can't turn it off that way." The elder sister
paused long enough for the younger's face to show, in
spite of superiority, an apprehension. "I 'm not talk
ing of any man but Aunt Maud's man, nor of any
money even, if you like, but Aunt Maud's money.
I 'm not talking of anything but your doing what she
wants. You 're wrong if you speak of anything that I
want of you; I want nothing but what she does.
That's good enough for me!" — and Marian's tone
struck her companion as of the lowest. "If I don't
believe in Merton Densher I do at least in Mrs.
Lowder."

"Your ideas are the more striking," Kate returned,
"that they 're the same as papa's. I had them from
him, you '11 be interested to know — and with all the
brilliancy you may imagine — yesterday."

Marian clearly was interested to know. "He has
been to see you ? "

"No, I went to him."

40

BOOK FIRST

"Really?" Marian wondered. "For what pur-
pose?" '

"To tell him I 'm ready to go to him."

Marian stared. "To leave Aunt Maud — ?"

"For my father, yes."

She had fairly flushed, poor Mrs. Condrip, with
horror. " You 're ready — ? "

"So I told him. I could n't tell him less."

"And pray could you tell him more?" Marian
gasped in her distress. "What in the world is he to
us ? You bring out such a thing as that this way ? "

They faced each other — the tears were in Mar
ian's eyes. Kate watched them there a moment and
then said: "I had thought it well over — over and
over. But you need n't feel injured. I 'm not going.
He won't have me."

Her companion still panted — it took time to sub
side. "Well, / wouldn't have you — wouldn't re
ceive you at all, I can assure you — if he had made
you any other answer. I do feel injured — at your
having been willing. If you were to go to papa, my
dear, you 'd have to stop coming to me." Marian put
it thus, indefinably, as a picture of privation from
which her companion might shrink. Such were the
threats she could complacently make, could think
herself masterful for making. " But if he won't take
you," she continued, "he shows at least his sharp

ness."

Marian had always her views of sharpness; she
was, as her sister privately commented, great on that
resource. But Kate had her refuge from irritation.
"He won't take me," she simply repeated. "But he

41

THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

believes, like you, in Aunt Maud. He threatens me
with his curse if I leave her."

"So you won't?" As the girl at first said nothing
her companion caught at it. " You won't, of course ?
I see you won't. But I don't see why, conveniently, I
should n't insist to you once for all on the plain truth
of the whole matter. The truth, my dear, of your
duty. Do you ever think about that? It's the greatest
duty of all."

"There you are again," Kate laughed. "Papa's
also immense on my duty."

"Oh I don't pretend to be immense, but I pretend
to know more than you do of life; more even perhaps
than papa." Marian seemed to see that personage
at this moment, nevertheless, in the light of a kinder
irony. " Poor old papa ! "

She sighed it with as many condonations as her
sister's ear had more than once caught in her " Dear
old Aunt Maud!" These were things that made
Kate turn for the time sharply away, and she gathered
herself now to go. They were the note again of the
abject; it was hard to say which of the persons in
question had most shown how little they liked her.
The younger woman proposed at any rate to let dis
cussion rest, and she believed that, for herself, she
had done so during the ten minutes elapsing, thanks
to her wish not to break off short, before she could
gracefully withdraw. It then appeared, however, that
Marian had been discussing still, and there was some
thing that at the last Kate had to take up. "Whom
do you mean by Aunt Maud's young man ? "

"Whom should I mean but Lord Mark?"
42

BOOK FIRST

"And where do you pick up such vulgar twad
dle ? " Kate demanded with her clear face. "How does
such stuff, in this hole, get to you ? "

She had no sooner spoken than she asked herself
what had become of the grace to which she had sacri
ficed. Marian certainly did little to save it, and no
thing indeed was so inconsequent as her ground of
complaint. She desired her to "work" Lancaster
Gate as she believed that scene of abundance could
be worked ; but she now did n't see why advantage
should be taken of the bloated connexion to put an
affront on her own poor home. She appeared in fact
for the moment to take the position that Kate kept her
in her "hole" and then heartlessly reflected on her
being in it. Yet she did n't explain how she had picked
up the report on which her sister had challenged her
— so that it was thus left to her sister to see in it once
more a sign of the creeping curiosity of the Miss
Condrips. They lived in a deeper hole than Marian,
but they kept their ear to the ground, they spent their
days in prowling, whereas Marian, in garments and
shoes that seemed steadily to grow looser and larger,
never prowled. There were times when Kate won
dered if the Miss Condrips were offered her by fate as
a warning for her own future — to be taken as show
ing her what she herself might become at forty if she
let things too recklessly go. What was expected of her
by others — and by so many of them — could, all the
same, on occasion, present itself as beyond a joke; and
this was just now the aspect it particularly wore. She
was not only to quarrel with Merton Densher for the
pleasure of her five spectators — with the Miss Con-

43

THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

drips there were five; she was to set forth in pursuit of
Lord Mark on some preposterous theory of the pre
mium attached to success. Mrs. Lowder's hand had
hung out the premium, and it figured at the end of the
; course as a bell that would ring, break out into public
clamour, as soon as touched. Kate reflected sharply
enough on the weak points of this fond fiction, with
the result at last of a certain chill for her sister's con
fidence; though Mrs. Condrip still took refuge in the
plea — which was after all the great point — that their
aunt would be munificent when their aunt should be
content. The exact identity of her candidate was a
detail ; what was of the essence was her conception of
the kind of match it was open to her niece to make
with her aid. Marian always spoke of marriages as
"matches," but that was again a detail. Mrs. Low
der's "aid" meanwhile awaited them — if not to
light the way to Lord Mark, then to somebody better.
Marian would put up, in fine, with somebody better ;
she only would n't put up with somebody so much
worse. Kate had once more to go through all this
before a graceful issue was reached. It was reached
by her paying with the sacrifice of Mr. Densher for her
reduction of Lord Mark to the absurd. So they sep
arated softly enough. She was to be let off hearing
about Lord Mark so long as she made it good that she
was n't underhand about any one else. She had
denied everything and every one, she reflected as she
went away — and that was a relief; but it also made
rather a clean sweep of the future. The prospect put
on a bareness that already gave her something in
common with the Miss Condrips.

BOOK SECOND

MERTON DENSHER, who passed the best hours of each
night at the office of his newspaper, had at times, dur
ing the day, to make up for it, a sense, or at least an
appearance, of leisure, in accordance with which he
was not infrequently to be met in different parts of the
town at moments when men of business are hidden
from the public eye. More than once during the pre
sent winter's end he had deviated toward three
o'clock, or toward four, into Kensington Gardens,
where he might for a while, on each occasion, have
been observed to demean himself as a person with no
thing to do. He made his way indeed, for the most
part, with a certain directness over to the north side;
but once that ground was reached his behaviour was
noticeably wanting in point. He moved, seemingly at
random, from alley to alley; he stopped for no reason
and remained idly agaze ; he sat down in a chair and
then changed to a bench ; after which he walked about
again, only again to repeat both the vagueness and the
vivacity. Distinctly he was a man either with nothing
at all to do or with ever so much to think about; and
it was not to be denied that the impression he might
often thus easily make had the effect of causing the
burden of proof in certain directions to rest on him. It
was a little the fault of his aspect, his personal marks,
which made it almost impossible to name his profes
sion.

47

THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

He was a longish, leanish, fairish young English
man, not unamenable, on certain sides, to classifica
tion — as for instance by being a gentleman, by being
rather specifically one of the educated, one of the gen
erally sound and generally civil; yet, though to that
degree neither extraordinary nor abnormal, he would
have failed to play straight into an observer's hands.
He was young for the House of Commons, he was
loose for the Army. He was refined, as might have
been said, for the City and, quite apart from the cut of
his cloth, sceptical, it might have been felt, for the
Church. On the other hand he was credulous for diplo
macy, or perhaps even for science, while he was per
haps at the same time too much in his mere senses for
poetry and yet too little in them for art. You would
have got fairly near him by making out in his eyes the
potential recognition of ideas; but you would have
quite fallen away again on the question of the ideas
themselves. The difficulty with Densher was that he
looked vague without looking weak — idle without
looking empty. It was the accident, possibly, of his
long legs, which were apt to stretch themselves; of
his straight hair and his well-shaped head, never, the
latter, neatly smooth, and apt into the bargain, at the
time of quite other calls upon it, to throw itself sud
denly back and, supported behind by his uplifted
arms and interlocked hands, place him for uncon
scionable periods in communion with the ceiling, the
tree-tops, the sky. He was in short visibly absent-
minded, irregularly clever, liable to drop what was
near and to take up what was far; he was more a
prompt critic than a prompt follower of custom. He

BOOK SECOND

suggested above all, however, that wondrous state of
youth in which the elements, the metals more or less
precious, are so in fusion and fermentation that the
question of the final stamp, the pressure that fixes the
value, must wait for comparative coolness. And it was
a mark of his interesting mixture that if he was irrit
able it was by a law of considerable subtlety — a law
that in intercourse with him it might be of profit,
though not easy, to master. One of the effects of it
was that he had for you surprises of tolerance as well
as of temper.

He loitered, on the best of the relenting days, the
several occasions we speak of, along the part of the
Gardens nearest to Lancaster Gate, and when,
always, in due time, Kate Croy came out of her
aunt's house, crossed the road and arrived by the
nearest entrance, there was a general publicity in the
proceeding which made it slightly anomalous. If their
meeting was to be bold and free it might have taken
place within-doors ; if it was to be shy or secret it might
have taken place almost anywhere better than under
Mrs. Lowder's windows. They failed indeed to re
main attached to that spot; they wandered and
strolled, taking in the course of more than one of these
interviews a considerable walk, or else picked out a
couple of chairs under one of the great trees and sat as
much apart — apart from every one else — as pos
sible. But Kate had each time, at first, the air of wish
ing to expose herself to pursuit and capture if those
things were in question. She made the point that she
was n't underhand, any more than she was vulgar;
that the Gardens were charming in themselves and

49

THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

this use of them a matter of taste; and that, if her aunt
chose to glare at her from the drawing-room or to
cause her to be tracked and overtaken, she could at
least make it convenient that this should be easily
done. The fact was that the relation between these
young persons abounded in such oddities as were not
inaptly symbolised by assignations that had a good
deal more appearance than motive. Of the strength of
the tie that held them we shall sufficiently take the
measure; but it was meanwhile almost obvious that if
the great possibility had come up for them it had done
so, to an exceptional degree, under the protection of
the famous law of contraries. Any deep harmony that
might eventually govern them would not be the result
of their having much in common — having anything
in fact but their affection; and would really find its
explanation in some sense, on the part of each, of
being poor where the other was rich. It is nothing
new indeed that generous young persons often admire
most what nature has n't given them — from which
it would appear, after all, that our friends were both
generous.

Merton Densher had repeatedly said to himself —
and from far back — that he should be a fool not to
marry a woman whose value would be in her differ
ences ; and Kate Croy, though without having quite so
philosophised, had quickly recognised in the young
man a precious unlikeness. He represented what her
life had never given her and certainly, without some
such aid as his, never would give her; all the high dim
things she lumped together as of the mind. It was on
the side of the mind that Densher was rich for her and

50

BOOK SECOND

mysterious and strong; and he had rendered her in
especial the sovereign service of making that element
real. She had had all her days to take it terribly on
trust, no creature she had ever encountered having
been able to testify for it directly. Vague rumours of
its existence had made their precarious way to her;
but nothing had, on the whole, struck her as more
likely than that she should live and die without the
chance to verify them. The chance had come — it
was an extraordinary one — on the day she first met
Densher; and it was to the girl's lasting honour that
she knew on the spot what she was in presence of.
That occasion indeed, for everything that straightway
flowered in it, would be worthy of high commemora
tion; Densher's perception went out to meet the
young woman's and quite kept pace with her own re
cognition. Having so often concluded on the fact of
his weakness, as he called it, for life — his strength
merely for thought — life, he logically opined, was
what he must somehow arrange to annex and possess.
This was so much a necessity that thought by itself
only went on in the void ; it was from the immediate
air of life that it must draw its breath. So the young
man, ingenious but large, critical but ardent too,
made out both his case and Kate Croy's. They had
originally met before her mother's death — an occa
sion marked for her as the last pleasure permitted by
the approach of that event; after which the dark
months had interposed a screen and, for all Kate
knew, made the end one with the beginning.

The beginning — to which she often went back —
had been a scene, for our young woman, of supreme

51

THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

brilliancy; a party given at a "gallery" hired by a
hostess who fished with big nets. A Spanish dancer,
understood to be at that moment the delight of the
town, an American reciter, the joy of a kindred people,
an Hungarian fiddler, the wonder of the world at
large — in the name of these and other attractions the
company in which Kate, by a rare privilege, found her
self had been freely convoked. She lived under her
mother's roof, as she considered, obscurely, and was
acquainted with few persons who entertained on that
scale; but she had had dealings with two or three
connected, as appeared, with such — two or three
through whom the stream of hospitality, filtered or
diffused, could thus now and then spread to outlying
receptacles. A good-natured lady in fine, a friend of
her mother and a relative of the lady of the gallery,
had offered to take her to the party in question and
had there fortified her, further, with two or three of
those introductions that, at large parties, lead to other
things — that had at any rate on this occasion cul
minated for her in conversation with a tall fair, a
slightly unbrushed and rather awkward, but on the
whole a not dreary, young man. The young man had
affected her as detached, as — it was indeed what he
called himself — awfully at sea, as much more dis
tinct from what surrounded them than any one else
appeared to be, and even as probably quite disposed
to be making his escape when pulled up to be placed in
relation with her. He gave her his word for it indeed,
this same evening, that only their meeting had pre
vented his flight, but that now he saw how sorry he
should have been to miss it. This point they had

52

BOOK SECOND

reached by midnight, and though for the value of such
remarks everything was in the tone, by midnight the
tone was there too. She had had originally her full
apprehension of his coerced, certainly of his vague,
condition — full apprehensions often being with her
immediate; then she had had her equal consciousness
that within five minutes something between them
had — well, she could n't call it anything but come. It
was nothing to look at or to handle, but was somehow
everything to feel and to know; it was that something
for each of them had happened.

They had found themselves regarding each other
straight, and for a longer time on end than was usual
even at parties in galleries ; but that in itself after all
would have been a small affair for two such hand
some persons. It was n't, in a word, simply that their
eyes had met; other conscious organs, faculties, feelers
had met as well, and when Kate afterwards imaged to
herself the sharp deep fact she saw it, in the oddest
way, as a particular performance. She had observed a
ladder against a garden-wall and had trusted herself so
to climb it as to be able to see over into the probable
garden on the other side. On reaching the top she had
found herself face to face with a gentleman engaged
in a like calculation at the same moment, and the two
enquirers had remained confronted on their ladders.
The great point was that for the rest of that evening
they had been perched — they had not climbed down;
and indeed during the time that followed Kate at least
had had the perched feeling — it was as if she were
there aloft without a retreat. A simpler expression of
all this is doubtless but that they had taken each other

53

THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

in with interest; and without a happy hazard six
months later the incident would have closed in that
account of it. The accident meanwhile had been as
natural as anything in London ever is : Kate had one
afternoon found herself opposite Mr. Densher on the
Underground Railway. She had entered the train at
Sloane Square to go to Queen's Road, and the car
riage in which she took her place was all but full.
Densher was already in it — on the other bench and
at the furthest angle ; she was sure of him before they
had again started. The day and the hour were dark
ness, there were six other persons and she had been
busy seating herself; but her consciousness had gone
to him as straight as if they had come together in
some bright stretch of a desert. They had on neither
part a second's hesitation; they looked across the
choked compartment exactly as if she had known he
would be there and he had expected her to come in ; so
that, though in the conditions they could only exchange
the greeting of movements, smiles, abstentions, it
would have been quite in the key of these passages
that they should have alighted for ease at the very next
station. Kate was in fact sure the very next station
was the young man's true goal — which made it clear
he was going on only from the wish to speak to her.
He had to go on, for this purpose, to High Street
Kensington, as it was not till then that the exit of
a passenger gave him his chance.

His chance put him however in quick possession
of the seat facing her, the alertness of his capture of
which seemed to show her his impatience. It helped
them moreover, with strangers on either side, little to

54

BOOK SECOND

talk ; though this very restriction perhaps made such a
mark for them as nothing else could have done. If the
fact that their opportunity had again come round for
them could be so intensely expressed without a word,
they might very well feel on the spot that it had not
come round for nothing. The extraordinary part of
the matter was that they were not in the least meeting
where they had left off, but ever so much further on,
and that these added links added still another between
High Street and Netting Hill Gate, and then worked
between the latter station and Queen's Road an exten
sion really inordinate. At Notting Hill Gate Kate's
right-hand neighbour descended, whereupon Densher
popped straight into that seat; only there was not
much gained when a lady the next instant popped
into Densher's. He could say almost nothing — Kate
scarce knew, at least, what he said ; she was so occu
pied with a certainty that one of the persons opposite,
a youngish man with a single eye-glass which he kept
constantly in position, had made her out from the first
as visibly, as strangely affected. If such a person made
her out what then did Densher do ? — a question in
truth sufficiently answered when, on their reaching her
station, he instantly followed her out of the train.
That had been the real beginning — the beginning of
everything else ; the other time, the time at the party,
had been but the beginning of that. Never in life be
fore had she so let herself go ; for always before — so
far as small adventures could have been in question
for her — there had been, by the vulgar measure,
more to go upon. He had walked with her to Lancas
ter Gate, and then she had walked with him away

55

THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

from it — for all the world, she said to herself, like the
housemaid giggling to the baker.

This appearance, she was afterwards to feel, had
been all in order for a relation that might precisely
best be described in the terms of the baker and the
housemaid. She could say to herself that from that
hour they had kept company : that had come to repre
sent, technically speaking, alike the range and the
limit of their tie. He had on the spot, naturally, asked
leave to call upon her- — which, as a young person
who was n't really young, who did n't pretend to be a
sheltered flower, she as rationally gave. That — she
was promptly clear about it — was now her only pos
sible basis; she was just the contemporary London
female, highly modern, inevitably battered, honour
ably free. She had of course taken her aunt straight
into her confidence — had gone through the form of
asking her leave; and she subsequently remembered
that though on this occasion she had left the history of
her new alliance as scant as the facts themselves, Mrs.
Lowder had struck her at the time as surprisingly
mild. The occasion had been in every way full of
the reminder that her hostess was deep : it was defin
itely then that she had begun to ask herself what
Aunt Maud was, in vulgar parlance, "up to." "You
may receive, my dear, whom you like " — that was
what Aunt Maud, who in general objected to people's
doing as they liked, had replied ; and it bore, this un
expectedness, a good deal of looking into. There were
many explanations, and they were all amusing —
amusing, that is, in the line of the sombre and brood
ing amusement cultivated by Kate in her actual high

56

BOOK SECOND

retreat. Merton Densher came the very next Sunday;
but Mrs. Lowder was so consistently magnanimous as
to make it possible to her niece to see him alone. She
saw him, however, on the Sunday following, in order
to invite him to dinner; and when, after dining, he
came again — which he did three times, she found
means to treat his visit as preponderantly to herself.
Kate's conviction that she did n't like him made that
remarkable; it added to the evidence, by this time
voluminous, that she was remarkable all round. If
she had been, in the way of energy, merely usual she
would have kept her dislike direct; whereas it was
now as if she were seeking to know him in order to see
best where to "have" him. That was one of the re
flexions made in our young woman's high retreat; she
smiled from her lookout, in the silence that was only
the fact of hearing irrelevant sounds, as she caught
the truth that you could easily accept people when you
wanted them so to be delivered to you. When Aunt
Maud wished them dispatched it was not to be done
by deputy ; it was clearly always a matter reserved for
her own hand.

But what made the girl wonder most was the impli
cation of so much diplomacy in respect to her own
value. What view might she take of her position in the
light of this appearance that her companion feared so
as yet to upset her ? It was as if Densher were ac
cepted partly under the dread that if he had n't been
she would act in resentment. Had n't her aunt con
sidered the danger that she would in that case have
broken off, have seceded ? The danger was exagger
ated — she would have done nothing so gross; but that,

57

THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

it would seem, was the way Mrs. Lowder saw her and
believed her to be reckoned with. What importance
therefore did she really attach to her, what strange in
terest could she take in their keeping on terms ? Her
father and her sister had their answer to this — even
without knowing how the question struck her: they
saw the lady of Lancaster Gate as panting to make her
fortune, and the explanation of that appetite was
that, on the accident of a nearer view than she had
before enjoyed, she had been charmed, been dazzled.
They approved, they admired in her one of the be
lated fancies of rich capricious violent old women —
the more marked moreover because the result of no
plot ; and they piled up the possible fruits for the per
son concerned. Kate knew what to think of her own
power thus to carry by storm ; she saw herself as hand
some, no doubt, but as hard, and felt herself as clever
but as cold ; and as so much too imperfectly ambitious,
futhermore, that it was a pity, for a quiet life, she
could n't decide to be either finely or stupidly indiffer
ent. Her intelligence sometimes kept her still — too
still — but her want of it was restless ; so that she got
the good, it seemed to her, of neither extreme. She
saw herself at present, none the less, in a situation, and
even her sad disillusioned mother, dying, but with
Aunt Maud interviewing the nurse on the stairs, had
not failed to remind her that it was of the essence of
situations to be, under Providence, worked. The dear
woman had died in the belief that she was actually
working the one then recognised.

Kate took one of her walks with Densher just after
her visit to Mr. Croy; but most of it went, as usual, to

58

BOOK SECOND

their sitting in talk. They had under the trees by the
lake the air of old friends — particular phases of ap
parent earnestness in which they might have been
settling every question in their vast young world ; and
periods of silence, side by side, perhaps even more,
when "A long engagement!" would have been the
final reading of the signs on the part of a passer struck
with them, as it was so easy to be. They would have
presented themselves thus as very old friends rather
than as young persons who had met for the first time
but a year before and had spent most of the interval
without contact. It was indeed for each, already, as if
they were older friends ; and though the succession of
their meetings might, between them, have been
straightened out, they only had a confused sense of
a good many, very much alike, and a confused inten
tion of a good many more, as little different as pos
sible. The desire to keep them just as they were had
perhaps to do with the fact that in spite of the pre
sumed diagnosis of the stranger there had been for
them as yet no formal, no final understanding. Den-
sher had at the very first pressed the question, but
that, it had been easy to reply, was too soon ; so that
a singular thing had afterwards happened. They
had accepted their acquaintance as too short for an
engagement, but they had treated it as long enough
for almost anything else, and marriage was some
how before them like a temple without an avenue.
They belonged to the temple and they met in the
grounds; they were in the stage at which grounds
in general offered much scattered refreshment. But
Kate had meanwhile had so few confidants that

59

THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

she wondered at the source of her father's suspicions.
The diffusion of rumour was of course always re
markable in London, and for Marian not less — as
Aunt Maud touched neither directly — the mystery
had worked. No doubt she had been seen. Of
course she had been seen. She had taken no trouble
not to be seen, and it was a thing she was clearly in
capable of taking. But she had been seen how ? —
and what was there to see ? She was in love — she
knew that : but it was wholly her own business, and
she had the sense of having conducted herself, of still
so doing, with almost violent conformity.

" I 've an idea — in fact I feel sure — that Aunt
Maud means to write to you; and I think you had
better know it." So much as this she said to him as
soon as they met, but immediately adding to it : " So
as to make up your mind how to take her. I know
pretty well what she '11 say to you."

"Then will you kindly tell me ?"

She thought a little. " I can't do that. I should. spoil
it. She '11 do the best for her own idea."

"Her idea, you mean, that I'm a sort of a scoun
drel ; or, at the best, not good enough for you ? "

They were side by side again in their penny chairs,
and Kate had another pause. "Not good enough for
her."

"Oh I see. And that's necessary."

He put it as a truth rather more than as a question;
but there had been plenty of truths between them that
each had contradicted. Kate, however, let this one
sufficiently pass, only saying the next moment: "She
has behaved extraordinarily."

60

BOOK SECOND

"And so have we," Densher declared. "I think,
you know, we've been awfully decent."

" For ourselves, for each other, for people in general,
yes. But not for her. For her," said Kate, "we've
been monstrous. She has been giving us rope. So if
she does send for you," the girl repeated, "you must
know where you are."

"That I always know. It 's where you are that con
cerns me."

"Well," said Kate after an instant, "her idea of
that is what you'll have from her." He gave her a
long look, and whatever else people who would n't let
her alone might have wished, for her advancement,
his long looks were the thing in the world she could
never have enough of. What she felt was that, what
ever might happen, she must keep them, must make
them most completely her possession ; and it was al
ready strange enough that she reasoned, or at all
events began to act, as if she might work them in with
other and alien things, privately cherish them and yet,
as regards the rigour of it, pay no price. She looked it
well in the face, she took it intensely home, that they
were lovers; she rejoiced to herself and, frankly, to
him, in their wearing of the name; but, distinguished
creature that, in her way, she was, she took a view of
this character that scarce squared with the conven
tional. The character itself she insisted on as their
right, taking that so for granted that it did n't seem
even bold; but Densher, though he agreed with her,
found himself moved to wonder at her simplifications,
her values. Life might prove difficult — was evidently
going to; but meanwhile they had each other, and

61

THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

that was everything. This was her reasoning, but
meanwhile, for him, each other was what they did n't
have, and it was just the point. Repeatedly, however,
it was a point that, in the face of strange and special
things, he judged it rather awkwardly gross to urge.
It was impossible to keep Mrs. Lowder out of their
scheme. She stood there too close to it and too solidly;
it had to open a gate, at a given point, do what they
would, to take her in. And she came in, always, while
they sat together rather helplessly watching her, as in
a coach-and-four; she drove round their prospect as
the principal lady at the circus drives round the ring,
and she stopped the coach in the middle to alight with
majesty. It was our young man's sense that she was
magnificently vulgar, but yet quite that this was n't
all. It was n't with her vulgarity that she felt his want
of means, though that might have helped her richly to
embroider it ; nor was it with the same infirmity that
she was strong original dangerous.

His want of means — of means sufficient for any
one but himself — was really the great ugliness, and
was moreover at no time more ugly for him than when
it rose there, as it did seem to rise, all shameless, face
to face with the elements in Kate's life colloquially
and conveniently classed by both of them as funny.
He sometimes indeed, for that matter, asked himself
if these elements were as funny as the innermost fact,
so often vivid to him, of his own consciousness — his
private inability to believe he should ever be rich. His
conviction on this head was in truth quite positive and
a thing by itself; he failed, after analysis, to under
stand it, though he had naturally more lights on it

BOOK SECOND

than any one else. He knew how it subsisted in spite
of an equal consciousness of his being neither ment
ally nor physically quite helpless, neither a dunce nor
a cripple ; he knew it to be absolute, though secret, and
also, strange to say, about common undertakings, not
discouraging, not prohibitive. Only now was he hav
ing to think if it were prohibitive in respect to mar
riage ; only now, for the first time, had he to weigh his
case in scales. The scales, as he sat with Kate, often
dangled in the line of his vision ; he saw them, large
and black, while he talked or listened, take, in the
bright air, singular positions. Sometimes the right was
down and sometimes the left; never a happy equi
poise — one or the other always kicking the beam.
Thus was kept before him the question of whether it
were more ignoble to ask a woman to take her chance
with you, or to accept it from your conscience that her
chance could be at the best but one of the degrees of
privation ; whether too, otherwise, marrying for money
might n't after all be a smaller cause of shame than
the mere dread of marrying without. Through these
variations of mood and view, nevertheless, the mark
on his forehead stood clear; he saw himself remain
without whether he married or not. It was a line on
which his fancy could be admirably active; the in
numerable ways of making money were beautifully
present to him; he could have handled them for his
newspaper as easily as he handled everything. He
was quite aware how he handled everything; it was
another mark on his forehead : the pair of smudges
from the thumb of fortune, the brand on the passive
fleece, dated from the primal hour and kept each other

63

THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

company. He wrote, as for print, with deplorable
ease; since there had been nothing to stop him even at
the age often, so there was as little at twenty; it was
part of his fate in the first place and part of the
wretched public's in the second. The innumerable
ways of making money were, no doubt, at all events,
what his imagination often was busy with after he had
tilted his chair and thrown back his head with his
hands clasped behind it. What would most have pro
longed that attitude, moreover, was the reflexion that
the ways were ways only for others. Within the
minute now — however this might be — he was aware
of a nearer view than he had yet quite had of those
circumstances on his companion's part that made least
for simplicity of relation. He saw above all how she
saw them herself, for she spoke of them at present
with the last frankness, telling him of her visit to her
father and giving him, in an account of her subsequent
scene with her sister, an instance of how she was
perpetually reduced to patching-up, in one way or
another, that unfortunate woman's hopes.

"The tune," she exclaimed, "to which we're a
failure as a family ! " With which he had it all again
from her — and this time, as it seemed to him, more
than all : the dishonour her father had brought them,
his folly and cruelty and wickedness; the wounded
state of her mother, abandoned despoiled and help
less, yet, for the management of such a home as
remained to them, dreadfully unreasonable too; the
extinction of her two young brothers — one, at nine
teen, the eldest of the house, by typhoid fever con
tracted at a poisonous little place, as they had after-

BOOK SECOND

wards found out, that they had taken for a summer;
the other, the flower of the flock, a middy on the
Britannia, dreadfully drowned, and not even by an
accident at sea, but by cramp, unrescued, while bath
ing, too late in the autumn, in a wretched little river
during a holiday visit to the home of a shipmate. Then
Marian's unnatural marriage, in itself a kind of spirit
less turning of the other cheek to fortune : her actual
wretchedness and plaintiveness, her greasy children,
her impossible claims, her odious visitors — these
things completed the proof of the heaviness, for them
all, of the hand of fate. Kate confessedly described
them with an excess of impatience; it was much of her
charm for Densher that she gave in general that turn
to her descriptions, partly as if to amuse him by free
and humorous colour, partly — and that charm was
the greatest — as if to work off, for her own relief, her
constant perception of the incongruity of things. She
had seen the general show too early and too sharply,
and was so intelligent that she knew it and allowed for
that misfortune ; therefore when, in talk with him, she
was violent and almost unfeminine, it was quite as if
they had settled, for intercourse, on the short cut of
the fantastic and the happy language of exaggeration.
It had come to be definite between them at a primary
stage that, if they could have no other straight way,
the realm of thought at least was open to them. They
could think whatever they liked about whatever they
would — in other words they could say it. Saying it
for each other, for each other alone, only of course
added to the taste. The implication was thereby con
stant that what they said when not together had no

65

THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

taste for them at all, and nothing could have served
more to launch them, at special hours, on their small
floating island than such an assumption that they
were only making believe everywhere else. Our young
man, it must be added, was conscious enough that it
was Kate who profited most by this particular play of
the fact of intimacy. It always struck him she had
more life than he to react from, and when she re
counted the dark disasters of her house and glanced at
the hard odd offset of her present exaltation — since
as exaltation it was apparently to be considered — he
felt his own grey domestic annals make little show. It
was naturally, in all such reference, the question of her
father's character that engaged him most, but her pict
ure of her adventure in Chirk Street gave him a sense
of how little as yet that character was clear to him.
What was it, to speak plainly, that Mr. Croy had
originally done ?

" I don't know — and I don't want to. I only know
that years and years ago — when I was about fifteen
— something or other happened that made him im
possible. I mean impossible for the world at large
first, and then, little by little, for mother. We of
course did n't know it at the time," Kate explained,
" but we knew it later ; and it was, oddly enough, my
sister who first made out that he had done something.
I can hear her now — the way, one cold black Sunday
morning when, on account of an extraordinary fog,
we had n't gone to church, she broke it to me by the
school-room fire. I was reading a history-book by the
lamp — when we did n't go to church we had to read
history-books — and I suddenly heard her say, out of

66

BOOK SECOND

the fog, which was in the room, and apropos of no
thing: 'Papa has done something wicked/ And the
curious thing was that I believed it on the spot and
have believed it ever since, though she could tell me
nothing more — neither what was the wickedness, nor
how she knew, nor what would happen to him, nor
anything else about it. We had our sense always that
all sorts of things had happened, were all the while
happening, to him ; so that when Marian only said she
was sure, tremendously sure, that she had made it out
for herself, but that that was enough, I took her word
for it — it seemed somehow so natural. We were not,
however, to ask mother — which made it more natu
ral still, and I said never a word. But mother, strangely
enough, spoke of it to me, in time, of her own accord
— this was very much later on. He had n't been with
us for ever so long, but we were used to that. She must
have had some fear, some conviction that I had an
idea, some idea of her own that it was the best thing to
do. She came out as abruptly as Marian had done:
' If you hear anything against your father — anything
I mean except that he 's odious and vile — remember
it 's perfectly false.' That was the way I knew it was
true, though I recall my saying to her then that I of
course knew it was n't. She might have told me it was
true, and yet have trusted me to contradict fiercely
enough any accusation of him that I should meet — to
contradict it much more fiercely and effectively, I
think, than she would have done herself. As it hap
pens, however," the girl went on, " I 've never had
occasion, and I 've been conscious of it with a sort of
surprise. It has made the world seem at times more

THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

decent. No one has so much as breathed to me. That
has been a part of the silence, the silence that sur
rounds him, the silence that, for the world, has washed
him out. He does n't exist for people. And yet I 'm
as sure as ever. In fact, though I know no more than
I did then, I 'm more sure. And that," she wound up,
"is what I sit here and tell you about my own father.
If you don't call it a proof of confidence I don't know
what will satisfy you."

"It satisfies me beautifully," Densher returned,
" but it does n't, my dear child, very greatly enlighten
me. You don't, you know, really tell me anything.
It's so vague that what am I to think but that you
may very well be mistaken ? What has he done, if no
one can name it ?"

"He has done everything."

" Oh — everything ! Everything 's nothing."

"Well then," said Kate, "he has done some par
ticular thing. It 's known — only, thank God, not to
us. But it has been the end of him. You could doubt
less find out with a little trouble. You can ask about."

Densher for a moment said nothing; but the next
moment he made it up. " I would n't find out for the
world, and I'd rather lose my tongue than put a
question."

"And yet it's a part of me," said Kate.

"A part of you?"

"My father's dishonour." Then she sounded for
him, but more deeply than ever yet, her note of proud
still pessimism. " How can such a thing as that not be
the great thing in one's life ? "

She had to take from him again, on this, one of his
68

BOOK SECOND

long looks, and she took it to its deepest, its headiest
dregs. "I shall ask you, for the great thing in your
life," he said, "to depend on me a little more." After
which, just debating, " Does n't he belong to some
club ? " he asked.

She had a grave headshake. "He used to — to
many."

"But he has dropped them ?"

"They've dropped him. Of that I'm sure. It
ought to do for you. I offered him," the girl imme
diately continued — " and it was for that I went to
him — to come and be with him, make a home for
him so far as is possible. But he won't hear of it."

Densher took this in with marked but generous
wonder. " You offered him — ' impossible ' as you
describe him to me — to live with him and share his
disadvantages ? " The young man saw for the mo
ment only the high beauty of it. " You are gallant ! "

" Because it strikes you as being brave for him ? "
She wouldn't in the least have this. "It wasn't
courage — it was the opposite. I did it to save myself
— to escape."

He had his air, so constant at this stage, as of her
giving him finer things than any one to think about.
"Escape from what ?"

"From everything."

" Do you by any chance mean from me ? "

"No; I spoke to him of you, told him — or what
amounted to it — that I would bring you, if he would
allow it, with me."

" But he won't allow it," said Densher.

"Won't hear of it on any terms. He won't help me,

THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

won't save me, won't hold out a finger to me," Kate
went on. "He simply wriggles away, in his inimitable
manner, and throws me back."

"Back then, after all, thank goodness," Densher
concurred, "on me."

But she spoke again as with the sole vision of the
whole scene she had evoked. "It's a pity, because
you'd like him. He's wonderful — he's charming."
Her companion gave one of the laughs that showed
again how inveterately he felt in her tone something
that banished the talk of other women, so far as he
knew other women, to the dull desert of the conven
tional, and she had already continued. "He would
make himself delightful to you."

"Even while objecting to me ?"

"Well, he likes to please," the girl explained —
"personally. I've seen it make him wonderful. He
would appreciate you and be clever with you. It 's to
me he objects — that is as to my liking you."

"Heaven be praised then," cried Densher, "that
you like me enough for the objection ! "

But she met it after an instant with some inconse
quence. " I don't. I offered to give you up, if neces
sary, to go to him. But it made no difference, and
that 's what I mean," she pursued, " by his declining
me on any terms. The point is, you see, that I don't
escape."

Densher wondered. " But if you did n't wish to
escape me?"

"I wished to escape Aunt Maud. But he insists
that it 's through her and through her only that I may
help him; just as Marian insists that it's through her,

70

BOOK SECOND

and through her only, that I can help her. That's
what I mean," she again explained, " by their turning
me back."

The young man thought. "Your sister turns you
back too ? "

"Oh with a push!"

" But have you offered to live with your sister ? "

" I would in a moment if she 'd have me. That 's
all my virtue — a narrow little family feeling. I 've a J
small stupid piety — I don't know what to call it."
Kate bravely stuck to that; she made it out. "Some
times, alone, I 've to smother my shrieks when I think
of my poor mother. She went through things — they
pulled her down ; I know what they were now — I
did n't then, for I was a pig; and my position, com
pared with hers, is an insolence of success. That's
what Marian keeps before me ; that 's what papa him
self, as I say, so inimitably does. My position's a
value, a great value, for them both " — she followed
and followed. Lucid and ironic, she knew no merciful
muddle. " It 's the value — the only one they have/'

Everything between our young couple moved to?-
day, in spite of their pauses, their margin^, to a quicker
measure — the quickness and anxiety playing light
ning-like in the sultriness. Densher watched, decid
edly, as he had never done before. "And the fact you
speak of holds you ! "

"Of course it holds me. It's a perpetual sound in
my ears. It makes me ask myself if I 've any right to
personal happiness, any right to anything but to be as
rich and overflowing, as smart and shining, as I can be
made."

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THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

Densher had a pause. "Oh you might by good luck
have the personal happiness too."

Her immediate answer to this was a silence like his
own; after which she gave him straight in the face,
but quite simply and quietly: "Darling!"

It took him another moment ; then he was also quiet
and simple. " Will you settle it by our being married
to-morrow — as we can, with perfect ease, civilly ? "

"Let us wait to arrange it," Kate presently replied,
"till after you've seen her."

" Do you call that adoring me ? " Densher de
manded.

They were talking, for the time, with the strangest
mixture of deliberation and directness, and nothing
could have been more in the tone of it than the way
she at last said : "You're afraid of her yourself."

He gave rather a glazed smile. "For young persons
of a great distinction and a very high spirit we 're a
caution ! "

"Yes," she took it straight up; "we're hideously
intelligent. But there 's fun in it too. We must get our
fun where we can. I think," she added, and for that
matter not without courage, "our relation's quite
beautiful. It 's not a bit vulgar. I cling to some saving
romance in things."

It made him break into a laugh that had more
freedom than his smile. "How you must be afraid
you'll chuck me!"

"No, no, that would be vulgar. But of course," she
admitted, "I do see my danger of doing something
base."

"Then what can be so base as sacrificing me?"

72

BOOK SECOND

"I shan't sacrifice you. Don't cry out till you're
hurt. I shall sacrifice nobody and nothing, and that 's
just my situation, that I want and that I shall try for
everything. That," she wound up, "is how I see my
self (and how I see you quite as much) acting for
them."

"For 'them'?" — and the young man extra
vagantly marked his coldness. "Thank you!"

" Don't you care for them ? "

"Why should I ? What are they to me but a serious
nuisance ?"

As soon as he had permitted himself this qualifica
tion of the unfortunate persons she so perversely
cherished he repented of his roughness — and partly
because he expected a flash from her. But it was one
of her finest sides that she sometimes flashed with a
mere mild glow. " I don't see why you don't make out
a little more that if we avoid stupidity we may do all.
We may keep her."

He stared. "Make her pension us ?"

"Well, wait at least till we've seen."

He thought. " Seen what can be got out of her ? "

Kate for a moment said nothing. "After all I never
asked her; never, when our troubles were at the worst,
appealed to her nor went near her. She fixed upon me
herself, settled on me with her wonderful gilded claws."

"You speak," Densher observed, "as if she were a
vulture."

" Call it an eagle — with a gilded beak as well, and
with wings for great flights. If she 's a thing of the air,
in short — say at once a great seamed silk balloon — I
never myself got into her car. I was her choice."

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THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

It had really, her sketch of the affair, a high colour
and a great style; at all of which he gazed a minute
as at a picture by a master. "What she must see in
you!"

"Wonders!" And, speaking it loud, she stood
straight up. "Everything. There it is."

Yes, there it was, and as she remained before him
he continued to face it. "So that what you mean is
that I 'm to do my part in somehow squaring her ? "

"See her, see her," Kate said with impatience.

"And grovel to her?"

"Ah do what you like!" And she walked in her
impatience away.

II

His eyes had followed her at this time quite long
enough, before he overtook her, to make out more
than ever in the poise of her head, the pride of her
step — he did n't know what best to call it — a part
at least of Mrs. Lowder's reasons. He consciously
winced while he figured his presenting himself as a
reason opposed to these ; though at the same moment,
with the source of Aunt Maud's inspiration thus be
fore him, he was prepared to conform, by almost any
abject attitude or profitable compromise, to his com
panion's easy injunction. He would do as she liked —
his own liking might come off as it would. He would
help her to the utmost of his power ; for, all the rest of
this day and the next, her easy injunction, tossed off
that way as she turned her beautiful back, was like the
crack of a great whip in the blue air, the high element
in which Mrs. Lowder hung. He would n't grovel
perhaps — he was n't quite ready for that ; but he
would be patient, ridiculous, reasonable, unreason
able, and above all deeply diplomatic. He would be
clever with all his cleverness — which he now shook
hard, as he sometimes shook his poor dear shabby
old watch, to start it up again. It was n't, thank good
ness, as if there were n't plenty of that "factor " (to use
one of his great newspaper-words), and with what they
could muster between them it would be little to the
credit of their star, however pale, that defeat and sur
render — surrender so early, so immediate — should

75

THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

have to ensue. It was not indeed that he thought of
that disaster as at the worst a direct sacrifice of their
possibilities : he imaged it — which was enough — as
some proved vanity, some exposed fatuity in the
idea of bringing Mrs. Lowder round. When shortly
afterwards, in this lady's vast drawing-room — the
apartments at Lancaster Gate had struck him from
the first as of prodigious extent — he awaited her, at
her request, conveyed in a "reply-paid" telegram, his
theory was that of their still clinging to their idea,
though with a sense of the difficulty of it really en
larged to the scale of the place.

He had the place for a long time — it seemed to him
a quarter of an hour — to himself; and while Aunt
Maud kept him and kept him, while observation and
reflexion crowded on him, he asked himself what was
to be expected of a person who could treat one like
that. The visit, the hour were of her own proposing,
so that her delay, no doubt, was but part of a general
plan of putting him to inconvenience. As he walked
to and fro, however, taking in the message of her mass
ive florid furniture, the- immense expression of her
signs and symbols, he had as little doubt of the incon
venience he was prepared to suffer. He found himself
even facing the thought that he had nothing to fall
back on, and that that was as great an humiliation
in a good cause as a proud man could desire. It had n't
yet been so distinct to him that he made no show —
literally not the smallest; so complete a show seemed
made there all about him; so almost abnormally affirm
ative, so aggressively erect, were the huge heavy ob
jects that syllabled his hostess's story. "When all's

BOOK SECOND

said and done, you know, she 's colossally vulgar " —
he had once all but noted that of her to her niece; only
just keeping it back at the last, keeping it to himself
with all its danger about it. It mattered because it
bore so directly, and he at all events quite felt it a
thing that Kate herself would some day bring out to
him. It bore directly at present, and really all the
more that somehow, strangely, it did n't in the least
characterise the poor woman as dull or stale. She was
vulgar with freshness, almost with beauty, since there
was beauty, to a degree, in the play of so big and bold
a temperament. She was in fine quite the largest pos
sible quantity to deal with ; and he was in the cage of
the lioness without his whip — the whip, in a word, of
a supply of proper retorts. He had no retort but that
he loved the girl — which in such a house as that was
painfully cheap. Kate had mentioned to him more
than once that her aunt was Passionate, speaking of it
as a kind of offset and uttering it as with a capital P,
marking it as something that he might, that he in fact
ought to, turn about in some way to their advantage.
He wondered at this hour to what advantage he could
turn it; but the case grew less simple the longer he
waited. Decidedly there was something he had n't
enough of.

His slow march to and fro seemed to give him the
very measure; as he paced and paced the distance it
became the desert of his poverty; at the sight of which
expanse moreover he could pretend to himself as little
as before that the desert looked redeemable. Lancas
ter Gate looked rich — that was all the effect ; which
it was unthinkable that any state of his own should

77

THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

ever remotely resemble. He read more vividly, more
critically, as has been hinted, the appearances about
him; and they did nothing so much as make him won
der at his aesthetic reaction. He had n't known —
and in spite of Kate's repeated reference to her own
rebellions of taste — that he should "mind " so much
how an independent lady might decorate her house.
It was the language of the house itself that spoke to
him, writing out for him with surpassing breadth and
freedom the associations and conceptions, the ideals
and possibilities of the mistress. Never, he felt sure,
had he seen so many things so unanimously ugly —
operatively, ominously so cruel. He was glad to have
found this last name for the whole character; "cruel "
somehow played into the subject for an article — an
article that his impression put straight into his mind.
He would write about the heavy horrors that could
still flourish, that lifted their undiminished heads, in
an age so proud of its short way with false gods; and it
would be funny if what he should have got from Mrs.
Lowder were to prove after all but a small amount of
copy. Yet the great thing, really the dark thing, was
that, even while he thought of the quick column he
might add up, he felt it less easy to laugh at the heavy
horrors than to quail before them. He could n't de
scribe and dismiss them collectively, call them either
Mid- Victorian or Early — not being certain they were
rangeable under one rubric. It was only manifest
they were splendid and were furthermore conclusively
British. They constituted an order and abounded in
rare material — precious woods, metals, stuffs, stones.
He had never dreamed of anything so fringed and

78

BOOK SECOND

scalloped, so buttoned and corded, drawn everywhere
so tight and curled everywhere so thick. He had never
dreamed of so much gilt and glass, so much satin and
plush, so much rosewood and marble and malachite.
But it was above all the solid forms, the wasted finish,
the misguided cost, the general attestation of morality
and money, a good conscience and a big balance.
These things finally represented for him a portentous
negation of his own world of thought — of which, for
that matter, in presence of them, he became as for the
first time hopelessly aware. They revealed it to him
by their merciless difference.

His interview with Aunt Maud, none the less, took
by no means the turn he had expected. Passionate
though her nature, no doubt, Mrs. Lowder on this oc
casion neither threatened nor appealed. Her arms of
aggression, her weapons of defence, were presumably
close at hand, but she left them untouched and un-
mentioned, and was in fact so bland that he properly
perceived only afterwards how adroit she had been.
He properly perceived something else as well, which
complicated his case ; he should n't have known what
to call it if he had n't called it her really imprudent
good nature. Her blandness, in other words, was n't
mere policy — he was n't dangerous enough for
policy: it was the result, he could see, of her fairly
liking him a little. From the moment she did that she
herself became more interesting, and who knew what
might happen should he take to liking her? Well, it
was a risk he naturally must face. She fought him at
any rate but with one hand, with a few loose grains of
stray powder. He recognised at the end of ten minutes,

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THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

and even without her explaining it, that if she had
made him wait it had n't been to wound him ; they
had by that time almost directly met on the fact of her
intention. She had wanted him to think for himself of
what she proposed to say to him — not having other
wise announced it ; wanted to let it come home to him
on the spot, as she had shrewdly believed it would.
Her first question, on appearing, had practically been
as to whether he had n't taken her hint, and this en
quiry assumed so many things that it immediately
made discussion frank and large. He knew, with the
question put, that the hint was just what he had taken ;
knew that she had made him quickly forgive her the
display of her power ; knew that if he did n't take care
he should understand her, and the strength of her pur
pose, to say nothing of that of her imagination, no
thing of the length of her purse, only too well. Yet he
pulled himself up with the thought too that he was
n't going to be afraid of understanding her ; he was
just going to understand and understand without detri
ment to the feeblest, even, of his passions. The play of
one's mind gave one away, at the best, dreadfully, 'in
action, in the need for action, where simplicity was all ;
but when one could n't prevent it the thing was to
make it complete. There would never be mistakes but
for the original fun of mistakes. What he must use his
fatal intelligence for was to resist. Mrs. Lowder
meanwhile might use it for whatever she liked.

It was after she had begun her statement of her own
idea about Kate that he began on his side to reflect
that — with her manner of offering it as really sufficient
if he would take the trouble to embrace it — she

80

BOOK SECOND

could n't half hate him. That was all, positively, she
seemed to show herself for the time as attempting;
clearly, if she did her intention justice she would have
nothing more disagreeable to do. " If I had n't been
ready to go very much further, you understand, I
would n't have gone so far. I don't care what you re
peat to her — the more you repeat to her perhaps the
better; and at any rate there's nothing she does n't al
ready know. I don't say it for her ; I say it for you —
when I want to reach my niece I know how to do it
straight." So Aunt Maud delivered herself — as with
homely benevolence, in the simplest but the clearest
terms ; virtually conveying that, though a word to the
wise was doubtless, in spite of the adage, not always
enough, a word to the good could never fail to be. The
sense our young man read into her words was that
she liked him because he was good — was really by
her measure good enough : good enough that is to give
up her niece for her and go his way in peace. But was
he good enough — by his own measure ? He fairly
wondered, while she more fully expressed herself, if it
might be his doom to prove so. " She 's the finest possi
ble creature — of course you flatter yourself you know
it. But I know it quite as well as you possibly can —
by which I mean a good deal better yet; and the tune
to which I 'm ready to prove my faith compares fav
ourably enough, I think, with anything you can do.
I don't say it because she 's my niece — that 's nothing
to me : I might have had fifty nieces, and I would n't
have brought one of them to this place if I had n't
found her to my taste. I don't say I would n't have
done something else, but I would n't have put up with

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THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

her presence. Kate's presence, by good fortune, I
marked early. Kate's presence — unluckily for you

— is everything I could possibly wish. Kate's pre
sence is, in short, as fine as you know, and I 've been
keeping it for the comfort of my declining years. I 've
watched it long; I 've been saving it up and letting it,
as you say of investments, appreciate; and you may
judge whether, now it has begun to pay so, I 'm likely
to consent to treat for it with any but a high bidder. I
can do the best with her, and I 've my idea of the
best."

"Oh I quite conceive," said Densher, "that your
idea of the best is n't me/'

It was an oddity of Mrs. Lowder's that her face in
speech was like a lighted window at night, but that
silence immediately drew the curtain. The occasion
for reply allowed by her silence was never easy to take,
yet she was still less easy to interrupt. The great glaze
of her surface, at all events, gave her visitor no present
help. " I did n't ask you to come to hear what it is n't

— I asked you to come to hear what it is."

"Of course," Densher laughed, "that's very great
indeed."

His hostess went on as if his contribution to the sub
ject were barely relevant. "I want to see her high,
high up — high up and in the light."

"Ah you naturally want to marry her to a duke and
are eager to smooth away any hitch."

She gave him so, on this, the mere effect of the
drawn blind that it quite forced him at first into the
sense, possibly just, of his having shown for flippant,
perhaps even for low. He had been looked at so, in

82

BOOK SECOND

blighted moments of presumptuous youth, by big cold
public men, but never, so far as he could recall, by any
private lady. More than anything yet it gave him the
measure of his companion's subtlety, and thereby of
Kate's possible career. "Don't be too impossible!"
— he feared from his friend, for a moment, some such
answer as that ; and then felt, as she spoke otherwise,
as if she were letting him off easily. " I want her to
marry a great man." That was all; but, more and
more, it was enough ; and if it had n't been her next
words would have made it so. "And I think of her
what I think. There you are."

They sat for a little face to face upon it, and he was
conscious of something deeper still, of something she
wished him to understand if he only would. To that
extent she did appeal — appealed to the intelligence
she desired to show she believed him to possess. He
was meanwhile, at all events, not the man wholly to
fail of comprehension. "Of course I'm aware how
little I can answer to any fond proud dream. You 've
a view — a grand one ; into which I perfectly enter.
I thoroughly understand what I'm not, and I'm
much obliged to you for not reminding me of it in any
rougher way." She said nothing — she kept that up ;
it might even have been to let him go further, if he
was capable of it, in the way of poorness of spirit. It
was one of those cases in which a man could n't show,
if he showed at all, save for poor; unless indeed he
preferred to show for asinine. It was the plain truth :
he was — on Mrs. Lowder's basis, the only one in
question — a very small quantity, and he did know,
damnably, what made quantities large. He desired to

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THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

be perfectly simple, yet in the midst of that effort a
deeper apprehension throbbed. Aunt Maud clearly
conveyed it, though he could n't later on have said
how. "You don't really matter, I believe, so much as
you think, and I 'm not going to make you a martyr
by banishing you. Your performances with Kate in
the Park are ridiculous so far as they 're meant as con
sideration for me ; and I had much rather see you my
self — since you 're, in your way, my dear young man,
delightful — and arrange with you, count with you,
as I easily, as I perfectly should. Do you suppose me
so stupid as to quarrel with you if it 's not really neces
sary ? It won't — it would be too absurd ! — be neces
sary. I can bite your head off any day, any day I really
open my mouth ; and I 'm dealing with you now, see —
and successfully judge — without opening it. I do
things handsomely all round — I place you in the
presence of the plan with which, from the moment it 's
a case of taking you seriously, you 're incompatible.
Come then as near it as you like, walk all round it
— don't be afraid you '11 hurt it ! — and live on with
it before you."

He afterwards felt that if she had n't absolutely
phrased all this it was because she so soon made him
out as going with her far enough. He was so pleas
antly affected by her asking no promise of him, her
not proposing he should pay for her indulgence by his
word of honour not to interfere, that he gave her a
kind of general assurance of esteem. Immediately
afterwards then he was to speak of these things to
Kate, and what by that time came back to him first of
all was the way he had said to her — he mentioned it

BOOK SECOND

to the girl — very much as one of a pair of lovers says
in a rupture by mutual consent : " I hope immensely
of course that you '11 always regard me as a friend."
This had perhaps been going far — he submitted it
all to Kate; but really there had been so much in it
that it was to be looked at, as they might say, wholly
in its own light. Other things than those we have pre
sented had come up before the close of his scene with
Aunt Maud, but this matter of her not treating him as
a peril of the first order easily predominated. There
was moreover plenty to talk about on the occasion of
his subsequent passage with our young woman, it
having been put to him abruptly, the night before,
that he might give himself a lift and do his newspaper
a service — so flatteringly was the case expressed —
by going for fifteen or twenty weeks to America. The
idea of a series of letters from the United States from
the strictly social point of view had for some time
been nursed in the inner sanctuary at whose door he
sat, and the moment was now deemed happy for
letting it loose. The imprisoned thought had, in a
word, on the opening of the door, flown straight out
into Densher's face, or perched at least on his shoulder,
making him look up in surprise from his mere inky
office-table. His account of the matter to Kate was
that he could n't refuse — not being in a position as
yet to refuse anything; but that his being chosen for
such an errand confounded his sense of proportion.
He was definite as to his scarce knowing how to meas
ure the honour, which struck him as equivocal; he
had n't quite supposed himself the man for the class
of job. This confused consciousness, he intimated,

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THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

he had promptly enough betrayed to his manager;
with the effect, however, of seeing the question sur
prisingly clear up. What it came to was that the sort
of twaddle that was n't in his chords was, unex
pectedly, just what they happened this time not to
want. They wanted his letters, for queer reasons,
about as good as he could let them come; he was to
play his own little tune and not be afraid : that was the
whole point.

It would have been the whole, that is, had there
not been a sharper one still in the circumstance that
he was to start at once. His mission, as they called it
at the office, would probably be over by the end of
June, which was desirable; but to bring that about he
must now not lose a week; his enquiries, he under
stood, were to cover the whole ground, and there were
reasons of state — reasons operating at the seat of
empire in Fleet Street — why the nail should be
struck on the head. Densher made no secret to Kate
of his having asked for a day to decide; and his ac
count of that matter was that he felt he owed it to her
to speak to her first. She assured him on this that
nothing so much as that scruple had yet shown her
how they were bound together : she was clearly proud
of his letting a thing of such importance depend on
her, but she was clearer still as to his instant duty.
She rejoiced in his prospect and urged him to his task;
she should miss him too dreadfully — of course she
should miss him ; but she made so little of it that she
spoke with jubilation of what he would see and would
do. She made so much of this last quantity that he
laughed at her innocence, though also with scarce the

86

BOOK SECOND

heart to give her the real size of his drop in the daily
bucket. He was struck at the same time with her
happy grasp of what had really occurred in Fleet
Street — all the more that it was his own final reading.
He was to pull the subject up — that was just what
they wanted; and it would take more than all the
United States together, visit them each as he might,
to let him down. It was just because he did n't nose
about and babble, because he was n't the usual gossip-
monger, that they had picked him out. It was a
branch of their correspondence with which they evid
ently wished a new tone associated, such a tone as,
from now on, it would have always to take from his
example.

"How you ought indeed, when you understand so
well, to be a journalist's wife!" Densher exclaimed
in admiration even while she struck him as fairly
hurrying him off.

But she was almost impatient of the praise. "What
do you expect one not to understand when one cares
for you ? "

"Ah then I '11 put it otherwise and say 'How much
you care for me ! "

"Yes," she assented; "it fairly redeems my stu
pidity. I shall, with a chance to show it," she added,
"have some imagination for you."

She spoke of the future this time as so little con
tingent that he felt a queerness of conscience in mak
ing her the report that he presently arrived at on
what had passed for him with the real arbiter of their
destiny. The way for that had been blocked a little
by his news from Fleet Street; but in the crucible of

THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

their happy discussion this element soon melted into
the other, and in the mixture that ensued the parts
were not to be distinguished. The young man more
over, before taking his leave, was to see why Kate had
spoken with a wisdom indifferent to that, and was to
come to the vision by a devious way that deepened the
final cheer. Their faces were turned to the illumined
quarter as soon as he had answered her question on
the score of their being to appearance able to play
patience, a prodigious game of patience, with success.
It was for the possibility of the appearance that she
had a few days before so earnestly pressed him to see
her aunt ; and if after his hour with that lady it had
not struck Densher that he had seen her to the happiest
purpose the poor facts flushed with a better meaning
as Kate, one by one, took them up.

" If she consents to your coming why is n't that
everything ? "

"It is everything; everything she thinks it. It's
the probability — I mean as Mrs. Lowder measures
probability — that I may be prevented from becom
ing a complication for her by some arrangement, any
arrangement, through which you shall see me often
and easily. She 's sure of my want of money, and that
gives her time. She believes in my having a certain
amount of delicacy, in my wishing to better my state
before I put the pistol to your head in respect to shar
ing it. The time this will take figures for her as the
time that will help her if she does n't spoil her chance
by treating me badly. She does n't at all wish more
over," Densher went on, "to treat me badly, for I be
lieve, upon my honour, odd as it may sound to you,

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BOOK SECOND

that she personally rather likes me and that if you
were n't in question I might almost become her pet
young man. She does n't disparage intellect and
culture — quite the contrary ; she wants them to
adorn her board and be associated with her name;
and I'm sure it has sometimes cost her a real pang
that I should be so desirable, at once, and so impos
sible." He paused a moment, and his companion then
saw how strange a smile was in his face — a smile as
strange even as the adjunct in her own of this in
forming vision. "I quite suspect her of believing
that, if the truth were known, she likes me literally
better than — deep down — you yourself do : where
fore she does me the honour to think I may be safely
left to kill my own cause. There, as I say, comes in
her margin. I 'm not the sort of stuff of romance that
wears, that washes, that survives use, that resists
familiarity. Once in any degree admit that, and your
pride and prejudice will take care of the rest ! — the
pride fed full, meanwhile, by the system she means to
practise with you, and the prejudice excited by the
comparisons she '11 enable you to make, from which I
shall come off badly. She likes me, but she '11 never
like me so much as when she has succeeded a little
better in making me look wretched. For then you 'II
like me less." t

Kate showed for this evocation a due interest, but
no alarm ; and it was a little as if to pay his tender
cynicism back in kind that she after an instant re
plied : " I see, I see — what an immense affair she
must think me ! One was aware, but you deepen the
impression."

THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

"I think you'll make no mistake," said Densher,
"in letting it go as deep as it will."

He had given her indeed, she made no scruple of
showing, plenty to amuse herself with. "Her facing
the music, her making you boldly as welcome as you
say — that 's an awfully big theory, you know, and
worthy of all the other big things that in one's ac
quaintance with people give her a place so apart."

"Oh she's grand," the young man allowed;
"she's on the scale altogether of the car of Jugger
naut — which was a kind of image that came to me
yesterday while I waited for her at Lancaster Gate.
The things in your drawing-room there were like the
forms of the strange idols, the mystic excrescences,
with which one may suppose the front of the car to
bristle."

"Yes, aren't they?" the girl returned; and they
had, over all that aspect of their wonderful lady, one
of those deep and free interchanges that made every
thing but confidence a false note for them. There
were complications, there were questions; but they
were so much more together than they were anything
else. Kate uttered for a while no word of refutation of
Aunt Maud's "big" diplomacy, and they left it there,
as they would have left any other fine product, for a
monument to her powers. But, Densher related fur
ther, he had had in other respects too the car of Jug
gernaut to face; he omitted nothing from his accoun
of his visit, least of all the way Aunt Maud had frankl
at last — though indeed only under artful pressure -
fallen foul of his very type, his want of the right mark;
his foreign accidents, his queer antecedents. She ha

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BOOK SECOND

told him he was but half a Briton, which, he granted
Kate, would have been dreadful if he had n't so let
himself in for it.

"I was really curious, you see," he explained, "to
find out from her what sort of queer creature, what
sort of social anomaly, in the light of such conventions
as hers, such an education as mine makes one pass
for."

Kate said nothing for a little; but then, "Why
should you care?" she asked.

"Oh," he laughed, "I like her so much; and then,
for a man of my trade, her views, her spirit, are es
sentially a thing to get hold of: they belong to the
great public mind that we meet at every turn and that
we must keep setting up 'codes' with. Besides," he
added, "I want to please her personally."

"Ah yes, we must please her personally ! " his com
panion echoed ; and the words may represent all their
Definite recognition, at the time, of Densher's politic
gain. They had in fact between this and his start for
New York many matters to handle, and the question
he now touched upon came up for Kate above all.
She looked at him as if he had really told her aunt
more of his immediate personal story than he had
ever told herself. This, if it had been so, was an ac
cident, and it perched him there with her for half an
hour, like a cicerone and his victim on a tower-top,
before as much of the bird's-eye view of his early
years abroad, his migratory parents, his Swiss schools,
his German university, as she had easy attention for.
A man, he intimated, a man of their world, would
have spotted him straight as to many of these points;

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THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

a man of their world, so far as they had a world, would
have been through the English mill. But it was none
the less charming to make his confession to a woman ;
women had in fact for such differences blessedly
more imagination and blessedly more sympathy.
Kate showed at present as much of both as his case
could require; when she had had it from beginning to
end she declared that she now made out more than
ever yet what she loved him for. She had herself, as a
child, lived with some continuity in the world across
the Channel, coming home again still a child; and
had participated after that, in her teens, in her
mother's brief but repeated retreats to Dresden, to
Florence, to Biarritz, weak and expensive attempts at
economy from which there stuck to her — though in
general coldly expressed, through the instinctive
avoidance of cheap raptures — the religion of foreign
things. When it was revealed to her how many more
foreign things were in Merton Densher than he had
hitherto taken the trouble to catalogue, she almost
faced him as if he were a map of the continent or a
handsome present of a delightful new "Murray."
He had n't meant to swagger, he had rather meant to
plead, though with Mrs. Lowder he had meant also
a little to explain. His father had been, in strange
countries, in twenty settlements of the English, British
chaplain, resident or occasional, and had had for
years the unusual luck of never wanting a billet. His
career abroad had therefore been unbroken, and as
his stipend had never been great he had educated his
children, at the smallest cost, in the schools nearest;
which was also a saving of railway-fares. Densher 's

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BOOK SECOND

mother, it further appeared, had practised on her side
a distinguished industry, to the success of which —
so far as success ever crowned it — this period of exile
had much contributed : she copied, patient lady, fam
ous pictures in great museums, having begun with a
happy natural gift and taking in betimes the scale of
her opportunity. Copyists abroad of course swarmed,
but Mrs. Densher had had a sense and a hand of her
own, had arrived at a perfection that persuaded, that
even deceived, and that made the " placing " of her
work blissfully usual. Her son, who had lost her, held
her image sacred, and the effect of his telling Kate all
about her, as well as about other matters until then
mixed and dim, was to render his history rich, his
sources full, his outline anything but common. He
had come round, he had come back, he insisted
abundantly, to being a Briton : his Cambridge years,
his happy connexion, as it had proved, with his father's
college, amply certified to that, to say nothing of his
subsequent plunge into London, which filled up the
measure. But brave enough though his descent to
English earth, he had passed, by the way, through
zones of air that had left their ruffle on his wings —
he had been exposed to initiations indelible. Som -
thing had happened to him that could never be ui -
done.

When Kate Croy said to him as much he besought
her not to insist, declaring that this indeed was what
was gravely the matter with him, that he had been
but too probably spoiled for native, for insular use.
On which, not unnaturally, she insisted the more, as
suring him, without mitigation, that if he was various

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THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

and complicated, complicated by wit and taste, she
would n't for the world have had him more helpless ;
so that he was driven in the end to accuse her of put
ting the dreadful truth to him in the hollow guise of
flattery. She was making him out as all abnormal
in order that she might eventually find him impos
sible, and since she could make it out but with his aid
she had to bribe him by feigned delight to help her.
If her last word for him in the connexion was that the
way he saw himself was just a precious proof the more
of his having tasted of the tree and being thereby pre
pared to assist her to eat, this gives the happy tone of
their whole talk, the measure of the flight of time in
the near presence of his settled departure. Kate
showed, however, that she was to be more literally
taken when she spoke of the relief Aunt Maud would
draw from the prospect of his absence.

"Yet one can scarcely see why," he replied, "when
she fears me so little."

His friend weighed his objection. "Your idea is
that she likes you so much that she '11 even go so far
as to regret losing you ? "

Well, he saw it in their constant comprehensive
way. "Since what she builds on is the gradual process
of your alienation, she may take the view that the pro
cess constantly requires me. Must n't I be there to
keep it going ? It's in my exile that it may languish."

He went on with that fantasy, but at this point
Kate ceased to attend. He saw after a little that she
had been following some thought of her own, and he
had been feeling the growth of something determinant
even through the extravagance of much of the pleas-

94

BOOK SECOND

antry, the warm transparent irony, into which their
livelier intimacy kept plunging like a confident swim
mer. Suddenly she said to him with extraordinary
beauty : " I engage myself to you for ever."

The beauty was in everything, and he could have
separated nothing — could n't have thought of her
face as distinct from the whole joy. Yet her face had
a new light. "And I pledge you — I call God to wit
ness ! — every spark of my faith ; I give you every
drop of my life." That was all, for the moment, but
it was enough, and it was almost as quiet as if it were
nothing. They were in the open air, in an alley of the
Gardens ; the great space, which seemed to arch just
then higher and spread wider for them, threw them
back into deep concentration. They moved by a com
mon instinct to a spot, within sight, that struck them
as fairly sequestered, and there, before their time to
gether was spent, they had extorted from concentra
tion every advance it could make them. They had
exchanged vows and tokens, sealed their rich compact,
solemnised, so far as breathed words and murmured
sounds and lighted eyes and clasped hands could do
it, their agreement to belong only, and to belong
tremendously, to each other. They were to leave the
place accordingly an affianced couple, but before they
left it other things still had passed. Densher had de
clared his horror of bringing to a premature end her
happy relation with her aunt; and they had worked
round together to a high level of discretion. Kate's
free profession was that she wished not to deprive him
of Mrs. Lowder's countenance, which in the long run
she was convinced he would continue to enjoy; and

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THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

as by a blest turn Aunt Maud had demanded of him
no promise that would tie his hands they should be
able to propitiate their star in their own way and yet
remain loyal. One difficulty alone stood out, which
Densher named.

"Of course it will never do — we must remember
that — from the moment you allow her to found
hopes of you for any one else in particular. So long as
her view is content to remain as general as at present
appears I don't see that we deceive her. At a given
hour, you see, she must be undeceived : the only thing
therefore is to be ready for the hour and to face it.
Only, after all, in that case," the young man observed,
"one does n't quite make out what we shall have got
from her."

"What she'll have got from us?" Kate put it with
a smile. "What she'll have got from us," the girl
went on, "is her own affair — it's for her to measure.
I asked her for nothing," she added; "I never put
myself upon her. She must take her risks, and she
surely understands them. What we shall have got
from her is what we've already spoken of," Kate
further explained; "it's that we shall have gained
time. And so, for that matter, will she."

Densher gazed a little at all this clearness ; his gaze
was not at the present hour into romantic obscurity.
"Yes; no doubt, in our particular situation, time's
everything. And then there 's the joy of it."

She hesitated. "Of our secret ?"

"Not so much perhaps of our secret in itself, but of
what's represented and, as we must somehow feel,
secured to us and made deeper and closer by it." And

BOOK SECOND

his fine face, relaxed into happiness, covered her with
all his meaning. "Our being as we are."

It was as if for a moment she let the meaning sink
into her. " So gone ? "

"So gone. So extremely gone. However," he
smiled, "we shall go a good deal further." Her an
swer to which was only the softness of her silence —
a silence that looked out for them both at the far
reach of their prospect. This was immense, and they
thus took final possession of it. They were practically
united and splendidly strong; but there were other
things — things they were precisely strong enough to
be able successfully to count with and safely to allow
for; in consequence of which they would for the pre
sent, subject to some better reason, keep their under
standing to themselves. It was not indeed however
till after one more observation of Densher's that they
felt the question completely straightened out. "The
only thing of course is that she may any day abso
lutely put it to you."

Kate considered. "Ask me where, on my honour,
we are? She may, naturally; but I doubt if in fact
she will. While you 're away she '11 make the most of
that drop of the tension. She'll leave me alone."

"But there'll be my letters."

The girl faced his letters. "Very, very many ?"

"Very, very, very many — more than ever; and
you know what that is ! And then," Densher added,
"there'll be yours."

"Oh I shan't leave mine on the hall-table. I shall
post them myself."

He looked at her a moment. " Do you think then
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THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

I had best address you elsewhere ? " After which, be
fore she could quite answer, he added with some em
phasis : " I 'd rather not, you know. It 's straighter."

She might again have just waited. "Of course it's
straighter. Don't be afraid I shan't be straight.
Address me," she continued, "where you like. I shall
be proud enough of its being known you write to me."

He turned it over for the last clearness. "Even at
the risk of its really bringing down the inquisition ? "

Well, the last clearness now filled her. " I 'm not
afraid of the inquisition. If she asks if there 's any
thing definite between us I know perfectly what I
shall say."

"That I am of course 'gone* for you ?"

"That I love you as I shall never in my life love
any one else, and that she can make what she likes of
that." She said it out so splendidly that it was like a
new profession of faith, the fulness of a tide breaking
through; and the effect of that in turn was to make
her companion meet her with such eyes that she had
time again before he could otherwise speak. "Be
sides, she's just as likely to ask you."

"Not while I'm away."

"Then when you come back."

"Well then," said Densher, "we shall have had our
particular joy. But what I feel is," he candidly added,
"that, by an idea of her own, her superior policy, she
won't ask me. She Jll let me off. I shan't have to lie
to her."

"It will be left all to me ?" asked Kate.

"All to you!" he tenderly laughed.

But it was oddly, the very next moment, as if he had

BOOK SECOND

perhaps been a shade too candid. His discrimination
seemed to mark a possible, a natural reality, a reality
not wholly disallowed by the account the girl had just
given of her own intention. There was a difference in
the air — even if none other than the supposedly
usual difference in truth between man and woman;
and it was almost as if the sense of this provoked her.
She seemed to cast about an instant, and then she
went back a little resentfully to something she had
suffered to pass a minute before. She appeared to
take up rather more seriously than she need the joke
about her freedom to deceive. Yet she did this too in
a beautiful way. "Men are too stupid — even you.
You did n't understand just now why, if I post my
letters myself, it won't be for anything so vulgar as to
hide them."

"Oh you named it — for the pleasure."
"Yes; but you did n't, you don't, understand what
the pleasure may be. There are refinements — ! "
she more patiently dropped. " I mean of conscious
ness, of sensation, of appreciation," she went on.
"No," she sadly insisted — "men don't know. They
know in such matters almost nothing but what women
show them."

This was one of the speeches, frequent in her, that,
liberally, joyfully, intensely adopted and, in itself, as
might be, embraced, drew him again as close to her,
and held him as long, as their conditions permitted.
"Then that's exactly why we've such an abysmal
need of you ! "

BOOK THIRD

I

THE two ladies who, in advance of the Swiss season,
had been warned that their design was unconsidered,
that the passes would n't be clear, nor the air mild,
nor the inns open — the two ladies who, characteristic
ally, had braved a good deal of possibly interested
remonstrance were rinding themselves, as their ad
venture turned out, wonderfully sustained. It was the
judgement of the head-waiters and other functionaries
on the Italian lakes that approved itself now as in
terested ; they themselves had been conscious of im
patiences, of bolder dreams — at least the younger
had; so that one of the things they made out together
— making out as they did an endless variety — was
that in those operatic palaces of the Villa d'Este, of
Cadenabbia, of Pallanza and Stresa, lone women,
however re-enforced by a travelling-library of instruct
ive volumes, were apt to be beguiled and undone.
Their flights of fancy moreover had been modest;
they had for instance risked nothing vital in hoping to
make their way by the Briinig. They were making it
in fact happily enough as we meet them, and were
only wishing that, for the wondrous beauty of the early
high-climbing spring, it might have been longer and
the places to pause and rest more numerous.

Such at least had been the intimated attitude of
Mrs. Stringham, the elder of the companions, who
had her own view of the impatiences of the younger,

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THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

to which, however, she offered an opposition but of
the most circuitous. She moved, the admirable Mrs.
Stringham, in a fine cloud of observation and suspic
ion ; she was in the position, as she believed, of know
ing much more about Milly Theale than Milly herself
knew, and yet of having to darken her knowledge as
well as make it active. The woman in the world least
formed by nature, as she was quite aware, for duplic
ities and labyrinths, she found herself dedicated to
personal subtlety by a new set of circumstances, above
all by a new personal relation; had now in fact to
recognise that an education in the occult — she could
scarce say what to call it — had begun for her the day
she left New York with Mildred. She had come on
from Boston for that purpose; had seen little of the
girl — or rather had seen her but briefly, for Mrs.
Stringham, when she saw anything at all, saw much,
saw everything — before accepting her proposal; and
had accordingly placed herself, by her act, in a boat
that she more and more estimated as, humanly speak
ing, of the biggest, though likewise, no doubt, in many
ways, by reason of its size, of the safest. In Boston,
the winter before, the young lady in whom we are in
terested had, on the spot, deeply, yet almost tacitly,
appealed to her, dropped into her mind the shy con
ceit of some assistance, some devotion to render. Mrs.
Stringham's little life had often been visited by shy
conceits — secret dreams that had fluttered their hour
between its narrow walls without, for any great part,
so much as mustering courage to look out of its rather
dim windows. But this imagination — the fancy of a
possible link with the remarkable young thing from

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BOOK THIRD

New York — bad mustered courage: had perched,
on the instant, at the clearest lookout it could find,
and might be said to have remained there till, only a
few months later, it had caught, in surprise and joy,
the unmistakeable flash of a signal.

Milly Theale had Boston friends, such as they were,
and of recent making; and it was understood that her
visit to them — a visit that was not to be meagre —
had been undertaken, after a series of bereavements,
in the interest of the particular peace that New York
could n't give. It was recognised, liberally enough,
that there were many things — perhaps even too
many — New York could give; but this was felt to
make no difference in the important truth that what
you had most to do, under the discipline of life, or of
death, was really to feel your situation as grave. Bos
ton could help you to that as nothing else could, and
it had extended to Milly, by every presumption, some
such measure of assistance. Mrs. Stringham was never
to forget — for the moment had not faded, nor the
infinitely fine vibration it set up in any degree ceased
— her own first sight of the striking apparition, then
unheralded and unexplained : the slim, constantly pale,
delicately haggard, anomalously, agreeably angular
young person, of not more than two-and-twenty sum
mers, in spite of her marks, whose hair was somehow
exceptionally red even for the real thing, which it in
nocently confessed to being, and whose clothes were
remarkably black even for robes of mourning, which
was the meaning they expressed. It was New York
mourning, it was New York hair, it was a New York
history, confused as yet, but multitudinous, of the loss

105

THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

of parents, brothers, sisters, almost every human ap
pendage, all on a scale and with a sweep that had re
quired the greater stage ; it was a New York legend
of affecting, of romantic isolation, and, beyond every
thing, it was by most accounts, in respect to the mass
of money so piled on the girl's back, a set of New York
possibilities. She was alone, she was stricken, she was
rich, and in particular was strange — a combination
in itself of a nature to engage Mrs. Stringham's at
tention. But it was the strangeness that most deter
mined our good lady's sympathy, convinced as she
had to be that it was greater than any one else — any
one but the sole Susan Stringham — supposed.
Susan privately settled it that Boston was not in the
least seeing her, was only occupied with her seeing
Boston, and that any assumed affinity between the
two characters was delusive and vain. She was seeing
her, and she had quite the finest moment of her life
in now obeying the instinct to conceal the vision.
She could n't explain it — no one would understand.
They would say clever Boston things — Mrs. String-
ham was from Burlington Vermont, which she boldly
upheld as the real heart of New England, Boston be
ing "too far south" — but they would only darken
counsel.

There could be no better proof (than this quick
intellectual split) of the impression made on our
friend, who shone herself, she was well aware, with
but the reflected light of the admirable city. She too
had had her discipline, but it had not made her strik
ing; it had been prosaically usual, though doubtless a
decent dose; and had only made her usual to match it

1 06

BOOK THIRD

— usual, that is, as Boston went. She had lost first
her husband and then her mother, with whom, on her
husband's death, she had lived again; so that now,
childless, she was but more sharply single than be
fore. Yet she sat rather coldly light, having, as she
called it, enough to live on — so far, that is, as she
lived by bread alone : how little indeed she was regu
larly content with that diet appeared from the name
she had made — Susan Shepherd Stringham — as a
contributor to the best magazines. She wrote short
stories, and she fondly believed she had her "note,"
the art of showing New England without showing it
wholly in the kitchen. She had not herself been
brought up in the kitchen ; she knew others who had
not; and to speak for them had thus become with her
a literary mission. To be in truth literary had ever
been her dearest thought, the thought that kept her
bright little nippers perpetually in position. There
were masters, models, celebrities, mainly foreign,
whom she finally accounted so and in whose light she
ingeniously laboured ; there were others whom, how
ever chattered about, she ranked with the inane, for
she bristled with discriminations; but all categories
failed her — they ceased at least to signify — as soon
as she found herself in presence of the real thing, the
romantic life itself. That was what she saw in Mil
dred — what positively made her hand a while trem
ble too much for the pen. She had had, it seemed to
her, a revelation — such as even New England refined
and grammatical could n't give; and, all made up as
she was of small neat memories and ingenuities, little
industries and ambitions, mixed with something

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THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

moral, personal, that was still more intensely respons
ive, she felt her new friend would have done her an
ill turn if their friendship should n't develop, and yet
that nothing would be left of anything else if it should.
It was for the surrender of everything else that she
was, however, quite prepared, and while she went
about her usual Boston business with her usual Bos
ton probity she was really all the while holding her
self. She wore her "handsome" felt hat, so Tyrolese,
yet somehow, though feathered from the eagle's wing,
so truly domestic, with the same straightness and
security; she attached her fur boa with the same
honest precautions; she preserved her balance on the
ice-slopes with the same practised skill; she opened,
each evening, her Transcript with the same inter
fusion of suspense and resignation ; she attended her
almost daily concert with the same expenditure of
patience and the same economy of passion ; she flitted
in and out of the Public Library with the air of con
scientiously returning or bravely carrying off in her
pocket the key of knowledge itself; and finally — it
was what she most did — she watched the thin trickle
of a fictive "love-interest" through that somewhat
serpentine channel, in the magazines, which she
mainly managed to keep clear for it. But the real
thing all the while was elsewhere; the real thing had
gone back to New York, leaving behind it the two
unsolved questions, quite distinct, of why it was real,
and whether she should ever be so near it again.

For the figure to which these questions attached
themselves she had found a convenient description —
she thought of it for herself always as that of a girl

108

BOOK THIRD

with a background. The great reality was in the fact
that, very soon, after but two or three meetings, the
girl with the background, the girl with the crown of
old gold and the mourning that was not as the mourn
ing of Boston, but at once more rebellious in its gloom
and more frivolous in its frills, had told her she had
never seen any one like her. They had met thus as
opposed curiosities, and that simple remark of Milly's
— if simple it was — became the most important
thing that had ever happened to her; it deprived the
love-interest, for the time, of actuality and even of
pertinence; it moved her first, in short, in a high de
gree, to gratitude, and then to no small compassion.
Yet in respect to this relation at least it was what did
prove the key of knowledge ; it lighted up as nothing
else could do the poor young woman's history. That
the potential heiress of all the ages should never have
seen any one like a mere typical subscriber, after all,
to the Transcript was a truth that — in especial
as announced with modesty, with humility, with re
gret — described a situation. It laid upon the elder
woman, as to the void to be filled, a weight of respons
ibility; but in particular it led her to ask whom poor
Mildred bad then seen, and what range of contacts it
had taken to produce such queer surprises. That was
really the enquiry that had ended by clearing the air :
the key of knowledge was felt to click in the lock from
the moment it flashed upon Mrs. Stringham that her
friend had been starved for culture. Culture was
what she herself represented for her, and it was living
up to that principle that would surely prove the great
business. She knew, the clever lady, what the princi-

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THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

pie itself represented, and the limits of her own store ;
and a certain alarm would have grown upon her if
something else had n't grown faster. This was, fortun
ately for her — and we give it in her own words —
the sense of a harrowing pathos. That, primarily,
was what appealed to her, what seemed to open the
door of romance for her still wider than any, than a
still more reckless, connexion with the "picture-
papers." For such was essentially the point: it was
rich, romantic, abysmal, to have, as was evident,
thousands and thousands a year, to have youth and
intelligence and, if not beauty, at least in equal meas
ure a high dim charming ambiguous oddity, which
was even better, and then on top of all to enjoy bound
less freedom, the freedom of the wind in the desert
— it was unspeakably touching to be so equipped and
yet to have been reduced by fortune to little humble-
minded mistakes.

It brought our friend's imagination back again to
New York, where aberrations were so possible in the
intellectual sphere, and it in fact caused a visit she
presently paid there to overflow with interest. As
Milly had beautifully invited her, so she would hold
out if she could against the strain of so much confid
ence in her mind; and the remarkable thing was
that even at the end of three weeks she had held out.
But by this time her mind had grown comparatively
bold and free; it was dealing with new quantities, a
different proportion altogether — and that had made
for refreshment: she had accordingly gone home in
convenient possession of her subject. New York was
vast, New York was startling, with strange histories,

no

BOOK THIRD

with wild cosmopolite backward generations that ac
counted for anything; and to have got nearer the lux
uriant tribe of which the rare creature was the final
flower, the immense extravagant unregulated cluster,
with free-living ancestors, handsome dead cousins,
lurid uncles, beautiful vanished aunts, persons all
busts and curls, preserved, though so exposed, in the
marble of famous French chisels — all this, to say
nothing of the effect of closer growths of the stem,
was to have had one's small world-space both crowded
and enlarged. Our couple had at all events effected
an exchange; the elder friend had been as con
sciously intellectual as possible, and the younger,
abounding in personal revelation, had been as uncon
sciously distinguished. This was poetry — it was also
history — Mrs. Stringham thought, to a finer tune
even than Maeterlinck and Pater, than Marbot and
Gregorovius. She appointed occasions for the reading
of these authors with her hostess, rather perhaps than
actually achieved great spans ; but what they managed
and what they missed speedily sank for her into the
dim depths of the merely relative, so quickly, so
strongly had she clutched her central clue. All her
scruples and hesitations, all her anxious enthusiasms,
had reduced themselves to a single alarm — the fear
that she really might act on her companion clumsily
and coarsely. She was positively afraid of what she
might do to her, and to avoid that, to avoid it with
piety and passion, to do, rather, nothing at all, to
leave her untouched because no touch one could ap
ply, however light, however just, however earnest and
anxious, would be half good enough, would be any-

iii

THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

thing but an ugly smutch upon perfection — this
now imposed itself as a consistent, an inspiring
thought.

Less than a month after the event that had so de
termined Mrs. Stringham's attitude — close upon the
heels, that is, of her return from New York — she
was reached by a proposal that brought up for her the
kind of question her delicacy might have to contend
with. Would she start for Europe with her young
friend at the earliest possible date, and should she be
willing to do so without making conditions ? The
enquiry was launched by wire; explanations, in suf
ficiency, were promised; extreme urgency was sug
gested and a general surrender invited. It was to the
honour of her sincerity that she made the surrender
on the spot, though it was not perhaps altogether to
that of her logic. She had wanted, very consciously,
from the first, to give something up for her new ac
quaintance, but she had now no doubt that she was
practically giving up all. What settled this was the
fulness of a particular impression, the impression that
had throughput more and more supported her and
which she would have uttered so far as she might by
saying that the charm of the creature was positively in
the creature's greatness. She would have been con
tent so to leave it; unless indeed she had said, more
familiarly, that Mildred was the biggest impression
of her life. That was at all events the biggest account
of her, and none but a big clearly would do. Her situ
ation, as such things were called, was on the grand
scale; but it still was not that. It was her nature, once
for all — a nature that reminded Mrs. Stringham of

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the term always used in the newspapers about the
great new steamers, the inordinate number of "feet of
water" they drew; so that if, in your little boat, you
had chosen to hover and approach, you had but your
self to thank, when once motion was started, for the
way the draught pulled you. * Milly drew the feet of
water, and odd though it might seem that a lonely
girl, who was not robust and who hated sound and
show, should/stir the stream like a leviathan, her com
panion floated off with the sense of rocking violently
at her side.-* More than prepared, however, for that
excitement, Mrs. Stringham mainly failed of ease in
respect to her own consistency. To attach herself for
an indefinite time seemed a roundabout way of hold
ing her hands off. If she wished to be sure of neither
touching nor smutching, the straighter plan would
doubtless have been not to keep her friend within
reach. This in fact she fully recognised, and with it
the degree to which she desired that the girl should
lead her life, a life certain to be so much finer than
that of anybody else. The difficulty, however, by
good fortune, cleared away as soon as she had further
recognised, as she was speedily able to do, that she
Susan Shepherd — the name with which Milly for
the most part amused herself — was not anybody
else. She had renounced that character; she had now
no life to lead ; and she honestly believed that she was
thus supremely equipped for leading Milly's own.
No other person whatever, she was sure, had to an
equal degree this qualification, and it was really to
assert it that she fondly embarked.
Many things, though not in many weeks, had come

"3

THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

and gone since then, and one of the best of them
doubtless had been the voyage itself, by the happy
southern course, to the succession of Mediterranean
ports, with the dazzled wind-up at Naples. Two or
three others had preceded this; incidents, indeed
rather lively marks, of their last fortnight at home,
and one of which had determined on Mrs. Stringham 's
part a rush to New York, forty-eight breathless hours
there, previous to her final rally. But the great sus
tained sea-light had drunk up the rest of the picture,
so that for many days other questions and other possi
bilities sounded with as little effect as a trio of penny
whistles might sound in a Wagner overture. It was
the Wagner overture that practically prevailed, up
through Italy, where Milly had already been, still
further up and across the Alps, which were also partly
known to Mrs. Stringham; only perhaps "taken" to
a time not wholly congruous, hurried in fact on ac
count of the girl's high restlessness. She had been
expected, she had frankly promised, to be restless —
that was partly why she was "great" — or was a
consequence, at any rate, if not a cause; yet she had
not perhaps altogether announced herself as straining
so hard at the cord. It was familiar, it was beautiful
to Mrs. Stringham that she had arrears to make up,
the chances that had lapsed for her through the wan
ton ways of forefathers fond of Paris, but not of its
higher sides, and fond almost of nothing else ; but the
vagueness, the openness, the eagerness without point
and the interest without pause — all a part of the
charm of her oddity as at first presented — had be
come more striking in proportion as they triumphed

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over movement and change. She had arts and idiosyn
crasies of which no great account could have been
given, but which were a daily grace if you lived with
them; such as the art of being almost tragically im
patient and yet making it as light as air; of being in
explicably sad and yet making it as clear as noon ; of
being unmistakeably gay and yet making it as soft as
dusk. Mrs. Stringham by this time understood every
thing, was more than ever confirmed in wonder and
admiration, in her view that it was life enough simply
to feel her companion's feelings ; but there were special
keys she had not yet added to her bunch, impressions
that of a sudden were apt to affect her as new.

This particular day on the great Swiss road had
been, for some reason, full of them, and they referred
themselves, provisionally, to some deeper depth than
she had touched — though into two or three such
depths, it must be added, she had peeped long enough
to find herself suddenly draw back. It was not Milly's
unpacified state, in short, that now troubled her —
though certainly, as Europe was the great American
sedative, the failure was to some extent to be noted :
it was the suspected presence of something behind
the state — which, however, could scarcely have
taken its place there since their departure. What a
fresh motive of unrest could suddenly have sprung
from was in short not to be divined. It was but half
an explanation to say that excitement, for each of
them, had naturally dropped, and that what they had
left behind, or tried to — the great serious facts of
life, as Mrs. Stringham liked to call them — was once
more coming into sight as objects loom through

"5

THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

smoke when smoke begins to clear; for these were
general appearances from which the girl's own aspect,
her really larger vagueness, seemed rather to discon
nect itself. The nearest approach to a personal anxi
ety indulged in as yet by the elder lady was on her
taking occasion to wonder if what she had more than
anything else got hold of might n't be one of the finer,
one of the finest, one of the rarest — as she called it so
that she might call it nothing worse — cases of Ameri
can intensity. She had just had a moment of alarm —
asked herself if her young friend were merely going
to treat her to some complicated drama of nerves. At
the end of a week, however, with their further pro
gress, her young friend had effectively answered the
question and given her the impression, indistinct in
deed as yet, of something that had a reality compared
with which the nervous explanation would have been
coarse. Mrs. Stringham found herself from that hour,
in other words, in presence of an explanation that re
mained a muffled and intangible form, but that as
suredly, should it take on sharpness, would explain
everything and more than everything, would become
instantly the light in which Milly was to be read.

Such a matter as this may at all events speak of the
style in which our young woman could affect those
who were near her, may testify to the sort of interest
she could inspire. She worked — and seemingly quite
without design — upon the sympathy, the curiosity,
the fancy of her associates, and we shall really our
selves scarce otherwise come closer to her than by
feeling their impression and sharing, if need be, their
confusion. She reduced them, Mrs. Stringham would

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have said, to a consenting bewilderment; which was
precisely, for that good lady, on a last analysis, what
was most in harmony with her greatness. She ex
ceeded, escaped measure, was surprising only because
they were so far from great. Thus it was that on this
wondrous day by the Briinig the spell of watching her
had grown more than ever irresistible; a proof of what
— or of a part of what — Mrs. Stringham had, with
all the rest, been reduced to. She had almost the
sense of tracking her young friend as if at a given mo
ment to pounce. She knew she should n't pounce,
she had n't come out to pounce; yet she felt her atten
tion secretive, all the same, and her observation scien
tific. She struck herself as hovering like a spy, apply
ing tests, laying traps, concealing signs. This would
last, however, only till she should fairly know what
was the matter; and to watch was after all, mean
while, a way of clinging to the girl, not less than an
occupation, a satisfaction in itself. The pleasure of
watching moreover, if a reason were needed, came
from a sense of her beauty. Her beauty had n't at all
originally seemed a part of the situation, and Mrs.
Stringham had even in the first flush of friendship not
named it grossly to any one; having seen early that for
stupid people — and who, she sometimes secretly
asked herself, was n't stupid ? — it would take a great
deal of explaining. She had learned not to mention it
till it was mentioned first — which occasionally hap
pened, but not too often; and then she was there in
force. Then she both warmed to the perception that
met her own perception, and disputed it, suspiciously,
as to special items; while, in general, she had learned

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THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

to refine even to the point of herself employing the
word that most people employed. She employed it to
pretend she was also stupid and so have done with the
matter; spoke of her friend as plain, as ugly even, in
a case of especially dense insistence; but as, in appear
ance, so "awfully full of things." This was her own
way of describing a face that, thanks doubtless to
rather too much forehead, too much nose and too
much mouth, together with too little mere conven
tional colour and conventional line, was expressive,
irregular, exquisite, both for speech and for silence.
When Milly smiled it was a public event — when she
did n't it was a chapter of history. They had stopped
on the Briinig for luncheon, and there had come up
for them under the charm of the place the question of
a longer stay.

Mrs. Stringham was now on the ground of thrilled
recognitions, small sharp echoes of a past which she
kept in a well-thumbed case, but which, on pressure
of a spring and exposure to the air, still showed itself
ticking as hard as an honest old watch. The em
balmed "Europe" of her younger time had partly
stood for three years of Switzerland, a term of continu
ous school at Vevey, with rewards of merit in the
form of silver medals tied by blue ribbons and mild
mountain-passes attacked with alpenstocks. It was
the good girls who, in the holidays, were taken highest,
and our friend could now judge, from what she sup
posed her familiarity with the minor peaks, that she
had been one of the best. These reminiscences, sacred
to-day because prepared in the hushed chambers of
the past, had been part of the general train laid for

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BOOK THIRD

the pair of sisters, daughters early fatherless, by their
brave Vermont mother, who struck her at present as
having apparently, almost like Columbus, worked out,
all unassisted, a conception of the other side of the
globe. She had focussed Vevey, by the light of nature
and with extraordinary completeness, at Burlington;
after which she had embarked, sailed, landed, ex
plored and, above all, made good her presence. She
had given her daughters the five years in Switzerland
and Germany that were to leave them ever afterwards
a standard of comparison for all cycles of Cathay, and
to stamp the younger in especial — Susan was the
younger — with a character, that, as Mrs. Stringham
had often had occasion, through life, to say to herself,
made all the difference. It made all the difference for
Mrs. Stringham, over and over again and in the most
remote connexions, that, thanks to her parent's lonely
thrifty hardy faith, she was a woman of the world.
There were plenty of women who were all sorts of
things that she was n't, but who, on the other hand,
were not that, and who did n't know she was (which
she liked — it relegated them still further) and did n't
know either how it enabled her to judge them. She
had never seen herself so much in this light as during
the actual phase of her associated, if slightly un
directed, pilgrimage; and the consciousness gave per
haps to her plea for a pause more intensity than she
knew. The irrecoverable days had come back to her
from far off; they were part of the sense of the cool
upper air and of everything else that hung like an in
destructible scent to the torn garment of youth — the
taste of honey and the luxury of milk, the sound of

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THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

cattle-bells and the rush of streams, the fragrance of
trodden balms and the dizziness of deep gorges.

Milly clearly felt these things too, but they affected
her companion at moments — that was quite the way
Mrs. Stringham would have expressed it — as the
princess in a conventional tragedy might have affected
the confidant if a personal emotion had ever been per
mitted to the latter. That a princess could only be a
princess was a truth with which, essentially, a confid
ant, however responsive, had to live. Mrs. String-
ham was a woman of the world, but Milly Theale
was a princess, the only one she had yet had to deal
with, and this, in its way too, made all the difference.
It was a perfectly definite doom for the wearer — it
was for every one else an office nobly filled. It might
have represented possibly, with its involved loneli
ness and other mysteries, the weight under which she
fancied her companion's admirable head occasionally,
and ever so submissively, bowed. Milly had quite
assented at luncheon to their staying over, and had
left her to look at rooms, settle questions, arrange
about their keeping on their carriage and horses;
cares that had now moreover fallen to Mrs. String-
ham as a matter of course and that yet for some rea
son, on this occasion particularly, brought home to
her — all agreeably, richly, almost grandly — what
it was to live with the great. Her young friend had in
a, sublime degree a sense closed to the general ques
tion of difficulty, which she got rid of furthermore
not in the least as one had seen many charming per
sons do, by merely passing it on to others. She kept it
completely at a distance: it never entered the circle;

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BOOK THIRD

the most plaintive confidant could n't have dragged
it in; and to tread the path of a confidant was accord
ingly to live exempt. Service was in other words so
easy to render that the whole thing was like court life
without the hardships. It came back of course to the
question of money, and our observant lady had by
this time repeatedly reflected that if one were talking
of the "difference," it was just this, this incompar
ably and nothing else, that when all was said and
done most made it. A less vulgarly, a less obviously
purchasing or parading person she could n't have
imagined; but it prevailed even as the truth of truths
that the girl could n't get away from her wealth. She
might leave her conscientious companion as freely
alone with it as possible and never ask a question,
scarce even tolerate a reference ; but it was in the fine
folds of the helplessly expensive little black frock
that she drew over the grass as she now strolled
vaguely off; it was in the curious and splendid coils of
hair, "done" with no eye whatever to the mode du
jour, that peeped from under the corresponding in
difference of her hat, the merely personal tradition
that suggested a sort of noble inelegance; it lurked
between the leaves of the uncut but antiquated Tauch-
nitz volume of which, before going out, she had
mechanically possessed herself. She could n't dress it
away, nor walk it away, nor read it away, nor think
it away; she could neither smile it away in any dreamy
absence nor blow it away in any softened sigh. She
could n't have lost it if she had tried — that was
what it was to be really rich. It had to be the thing
you were. When at the end of an hour she had n't

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THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

returned to the house Mrs. Stringham, though the
bright afternoon was yet young, took, with precau
tions, the same direction, went to join her in case of
her caring for a walk. But the purpose of joining her
was in truth less distinct than that of a due regard
for a possibly preferred detachment: so that, once
more, the good lady proceeded with a quietness that
made her slightly "underhand " even in her own eyes.
She could n't help that, however, and she did n't care,
sure as she was that what she really wanted was n't
to overstep but to stop in time. It was to be able to
stop in time that she went softly, but she had on this
occasion further to go than ever yet, for she followed
in vain, and at last with some anxiety, the footpath
she believed Milly to have taken. It wound up a hill
side and into the higher Alpine meadows in which,
all these last days, they had so often wanted, as they
passed above or below, to stray; and then it obscured
itself in a wood, but always going up, up, and with a
small cluster of brown old high-perched chalets evid
ently for its goal. Mrs. Stringham reached in due
course the chalets, and there received from a bewild
ered old woman, a very fearful person to behold, an
indication that sufficiently guided her. The young
lady had been seen not long before passing further on,
over a crest and to a place where the way would drop
again, as our unappeased enquirer found it in fact, a
quarter of an hour later, markedly and almost alarm
ingly to do. It led somewhere, yet apparently quite
into space, for the great side of the mountain ap
peared, from where she pulled up, to fall away alto
gether, though probably but to some issue below and

122

BOOK THIRD

out of sight. Her uncertainty moreover was brief, for
she next became aware of the presence on a fragment
of rock, twenty yards off, of the Tauchnitz volume
the girl had brought out and that therefore pointed
to her shortly previous passage. She had rid herself
of the book, which was an encumbrance, and meant
of course to pick it up on her return; but as she
had n't yet picked it up what on earth had become of
her ? Mrs. Stringham, I hasten to add, was within a
few moments to see ; but it was quite an accident that
she had n't, before they were over, betrayed by her
deeper agitation the fact of her own nearness.

The whole place, with the descent of the path and
as a sequel to a sharp turn that was masked by rocks
and shrubs, appeared to fall precipitously and to
become a "view" pure and simple, a view of great
extent and beauty, but thrown forward and vertigin-
ous. Milly, with the promise of it from just above,
had gone straight down to it, not stopping till it was
all before her; and here, on what struck her friend as
the dizzy edge of it, she was seated at her ease. The
path somehow took care of itself and its final business,
but the girl's seat was a slab of rock at the end of a
short promontory or excrescence that merely pointed
off to the right at gulfs of air and that was so placed
by good fortune, if not by the worst, as to be at last
completely visible. For Mrs. Stringham stifled a cry
on taking in what she believed to be the danger of
such a perch for a mere maiden ; her liability to slip, to
slide, to leap, to be precipitated by a single false move
ment, by a turn of the head — how could one tell ?
— into whatever was beneath. A thousand thoughts,

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THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

for the minute, roared in the poor lady's ears, but
without reaching, as happened, Milly's. It was a
commotion that left our observer intensely still and
holding her breath. What had first been offered her
was the possibility of a latent intention — however
wild the idea — in such a posture; of some betrayed
accordance of Milly's caprice with a horrible hidden
obsession. But since Mrs. Stringham stood as mo
tionless as if a sound, a syllable, must have produced
the start that would be fatal, so even the lapse of a
few seconds had partly a reassuring effect. It gave her
time to receive the impression which, when she some
minutes later softly retraced her steps, was to be the
sharpest she carried away. [This was the impression
that if the girl was deeply and recklessly meditating
there she was n't meditating a jump; she was on the
contrary, as she sat, much more in a state of uplifted
and unlimited possession that had nothing to gain
from violence. She was looking down on the king
doms of the earth, and though indeed that of itself
might well go to the brain, it would n't be with a view
of renouncing them. Was she choosing among them
or did she want them all f This question, before Mrs.
Stringham had decided what to do, made others vain;
in accordance with which she saw, or believed she did,
that if it might be dangerous to call out, to sound in
any way a surprise, it would probably be safe enough
to withdraw as she had come. She watched a while
longer, she held her breath, and she never knew after
wards what time had elapsed.

Not many minutes probably, yet they had n't
seemed few, and they had given her so much to think

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of, not only while creeping home, but while waiting
afterwards at the inn, that she was still busy with
them when, late in the afternoon, Milly reappeared.
She had stopped at the point of the path where the
Tauchnitz lay, had taken it up and, with the pencil
attached to her watch-guard, had scrawled a word —
a bientot ! — across the cover; after which, even
under the girl's continued delay, she had measured
time without a return of alarm. For she now saw that
the great thing she had brought away was precisely
a conviction that the future was n't to exist for her
princess in the form of any sharp or simple release
from the human predicament. It would n't be for
her a question of a flying leap and thereby of a quick
escape. It would be a question of taking full in the
face the whole^assault of life, to the general muster of
which indeed her face might have been directly pre
sented as she sat there on her rock. Mrs. Stringham
was thus able to say to herself during still another
wait of some length that if her young friend still con
tinued absent it would n't be because — whatever
the opportunity — she had cut short the thread. She
would n't have committed suicide ; she knew herself
unmistakeably reserved for some more complicated
passage; this was the very vision in which she had,
with no little awe, been discovered. The image that
thus remained with the elder lady kept the character
of a revelation. During the breathless minutes of her
watch she had seen her companion afresh; the latter's
type, aspect, marks, her history, her state, her beauty,
her mystery, all unconsciously betrayed themselves
to the Alpine air, and all had been gathered in again

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THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

to feed Mrs. Stringham's flame. They are things that
will more distinctly appear for us, and they are mean
while briefly represented by the enthusiasm that was
stronger on our friend's part than any doubt. It was
a consciousness she was scarce yet used to carrying,
but she had as beneath her feet a mine of something
precious. She seemed to herself to stand near the
mouth, not yet quite cleared. The mine but needed
working and would certainly yield a treasure. She
was n't thinking, either, of Milly's gold.

II

THE girl said nothing, when they met, about the
words scrawled on the Tauchnitz, and Mrs. String-
ham then noticed that she had n't the book with her.
She had left it lying and probably would never re
member it at all. Her comrade's decision was there
fore quickly made not to speak of having followed
her; and within five minutes of her return, wonder
fully enough, the preoccupation denoted by her for-
getfulness further declared itself. "Should you think
me quite abominable if I were to say that after
all — ?"

Mrs. Stringham had already thought, with the first
sound of the question, everything she was capable of
thinking, and had immediately made such a sign that
Milly's words gave place to visible relief at her assent.
"You don't care for our stop here — you 'd rather go
straight on ? We '11 start then with the peep of to
morrow's dawn — or as early as you like; it's only
rather late now to take the road again." And she
smiled to show how she meant it for a joke that an
instant onward rush was what the girl would have
wished. "I bullied you into stopping," she added;
"so it serves me right."

Milly made in general the most of her good friend's
jokes; but she humoured this one a little absently.
"Oh yes, you do bully me." And it was thus ar
ranged between them, with no discussion at all, that

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THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

they would resume their journey in the morning. The
younger tourist's interest in the detail of the matter —
in spite of a declaration from the elder that she would
consent to be dragged anywhere — appeared almost
immediately afterwards quite to lose itself; she pro
mised, however, to think till supper of where, with the
world all before them, they might go — supper hav
ing been ordered for such time as permitted of lighted
candles. It had been agreed between them that light
ed candles at wayside inns, in strange countries, amid
mountain scenery, gave the evening meal a peculiar
poetry — such being the mild adventures, the refine
ments of impression, that they, as they would have
said, went in for. It was now as if, before this repast,
Milly had designed to "lie down"; but at the end of
three minutes more she was n't lying down, she was
saying instead, abruptly, with a transition that was
like a jump of four thousand miles: "What was it
that, in New York, on the ninth, when you saw him
alone, Doctor Finch said to you ? "

It was not till later that Mrs. Stringham fully knew
why the question had startled her still more than its
suddenness explained; though the effect of it even at
the moment was almost to frighten her into a false
answer. She had to think, to remember the occasion,
the "ninth," in New York, the time she had seen Doc
tor Finch alone, and to recall the words he had then
uttered; and when everything had come back it was
quite, at first, for a moment, as if he had said some
thing that immensely mattered. He had n't, however,
in fact; it was only as if he might perhaps after all
have been going to. It was on the sixth — within ten

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BOOK THIRD

days of their sailing — that she had hurried from
Boston under the alarm, a small but a sufficient shock,
of hearing that Mildred had suddenly been taken ill,
had had, from some obscure cause, such an upset as
threatened to stay their journey. The bearing of the
accident had happily soon presented itself as slight,
and there had been in the event but a few hours of
anxiety; the journey had been pronounced again not
only possible, but, as representing "change," highly
advisable ; and if the zealous guest had had five min
utes by herself with the Doctor this was clearly no
more at his instance than at her own. Almost nothing
had passed between them but an easy exchange of
enthusiasms in respect to the remedial properties
of "Europe"; and due assurance, as the facts came
back to her, she was now able to give. "Nothing
whatever, on my word of honour, that you may n't
know or might n't then have known. I 've no secret
with him about you. What makes you suspect it ? I
don't quite make out how you know I did see him
alone."

"No — you never told me," said Milly. "And I
don't mean," she went on, "during the twenty-four
hours while I was bad, when your putting your heads
together was natural enough. I mean after I was
better — the last thing before you went home."

Mrs. Stringham continued to wonder. "Who told
you I saw him then ? "

"He didn't himself — nor did you write me it
afterwards. We speak of it now for the first time.
That's exactly why!" Milly declared — with some
thing in her face and voice that, the next moment,

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THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

betrayed for her companion that she had really known
nothing, had only conjectured and, chancing her
charge, made a hit. Yet why had her mind been busy
with the question ? " But if you 're not, as you now
assure me, in his confidence," she smiled, "it's no
matter."

"I'm not in his confidence — he had nothing to
confide. But are you feeling unwell ? "

The elder woman was earnest for the truth, though
the possibility she named was not at all the one that
seemed to fit — witness the long climb Milly had just
indulged in. The girl showed her constant white face,
but this her friends had all learned to discount, and it
was often brightest when superficially not bravest.
She continued for a little mysteriously to smile. "I
don't know — have n't really the least idea. But it
might be well to find out."

Mrs. Stringham at this flared into sympathy. "Are
you in trouble — in pain ? "

"Not the least little bit. But I sometimes won
der—!"

"Yes " — she pressed : "wonder what ? "

"Well, if I shall have much of it."

Mrs. Stringham stared. "Much of what? Not of
pain?"

"Of everything. Of everything I have."

Anxiously again, tenderly, our friend cast about.
"You 'have' everything; so that when you say
' much 'of it— "

"I only mean," the girl broke in, "shall I have it
for long ? That is if I have got it."

She had at present the effect, a little, of confound-
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ing, or at least of perplexing her comrade, who was
touched, who was always touched, by something
helpless in her grace and abrupt in her turns, and yet
actually half made out in her a sort of mocking light.
" If you 've got an ailment ? "

"If I've got everything," Milly laughed.

"Ah that — like almost nobody else."

"Then for how long ?"

Mrs. Stringham's eyes entreated her; she had gone
close to her, half-enclosed her with urgent arms. " Do
you want to see some one ? " And then as the girl
only met it with a slow headshake, though looking
perhaps a shade more conscious: "We'll go straight
to the best near doctor." This too, however, produced
but a gaze of qualified assent and a silence, sweet and
vague, that left everything open. Our friend de
cidedly lost herself. "Tell me, for God's sake, if
you're in distress."

"I don't think I've really everything" Milly said
as if to explain — and as if also to put it pleasantly.

" But what on earth can I do for you ? "

The girl debated, then seemed on the point of being
able to say; but suddenly changed and expressed
herself otherwise. " Dear, dear thing — I 'm only too
happy!"

It brought them closer, but it rather confirmed Mrs.
Stringham's doubt. "Then what's the matter?"

"That's the matter — that I can scarcely bear it."

" But what is it you think you have n't got ? "

Milly waited another moment ; then she found it,
and found for it a dim show of joy. "The power to
resist the bliss of what I have /"

THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

Mrs. Stringham took it in — her sense of being
"put off" with it, the possible, probable irony of it —
and her tenderness renewed itself in the positive grim-
ness of a long murmur. "Whom will you see ?" —
for it was as if they looked down from their height at
a continent of doctors. "Where will you first go?"

Milly had for the third time her air of considera
tion ; but she came back with it to her plea of some
minutes before. " I '11 tell you at supper — good-bye
till then." And she left the room with a lightness that
testified for her companion to something that again
particularly pleased her in the renewed promise of
motion. The odd passage just concluded, Mrs.
Stringham mused as she once more sat alone with a
hooked needle and a ball of silk, the " fine " work with
which she was always provided — this mystifying
mood had simply been precipitated, no doubt, by
their prolonged halt, with which the girl had n't really
been in sympathy. One had only to admit that her
complaint was in fact but the excess of the joy of life,
and everything did then fit. She could n't stop for the
joy, but she could go on for it, and with the pulse of
her going on she floated again, was restored to her
great spaces. There was no evasion of any truth — so
at least Susan Shepherd hoped — in one's sitting
there while the twilight deepened and feeling still
more finely that the position of this young lady was
magnificent. The evening at that height had naturally
turned to cold, and the travellers had bespoken a fire
with their meal; the great Alpine road asserted its
brave presence through the small panes of the low
clean windows, with incidents at the inn-door, the

132

BOOK THIRD

yellow diligence, the great waggons, the hurrying
hooded private conveyances, reminders, for our fanci
ful friend, of old stories, old pictures, historic flights,
escapes, pursuits, things that had happened, things
indeed that by a sort of strange congruity helped her
to read the meanings of the greatest interest into the
relation in which she was now so deeply involved. It
was natural that this record of the magnificence of her
companion's position should strike her as after all the
best meaning she could extract ; for she herself was
seated in the magnificence as in a court-carriage —
she came back to that, and such a method of progres
sion, such a view from crimson cushions, would evid
ently have a great deal more to give. By the time the
candles were lighted for supper and the short white
curtains drawn Milly had reappeared, and the little
scenic room had then all its romance. That charm
moreover was far from broken by the words in which
she, without further loss of time, satisfied her patient
mate. "I want to go straight to London."

It was unexpected, corresponding with no view
positively taken at their departure; when England
had appeared, on the contrary, rather relegated and
postponed — seen for the moment, as who should
say, at the end of an avenue of preparations and in
troductions. London, in short, might have been sup
posed to be the crown, and to be achieved, like a
siege, by gradual approaches. Milly's actual fine
stride was therefore the more exciting, as any simpli
fication almost always was to Mrs. Stringham ; who,
besides, was afterwards to recall as a piece of that
very "exposition" dear to the dramatist the terms in

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which, between their smoky candles, the girl had put
her preference and in which still other things had
come up, come while the clank of waggon-chains in
the sharp air reached their ears, with the stamp of
hoofs, the rattle of buckets and the foreign questions,
foreign answers, that were all alike a part of the cheery
converse of the road. The girl brought it out in truth
as she might have brought a huge confession, some
thing she admitted herself shy about and that would
seem to show her as frivolous; it had rolled over her
that what she wanted of Europe was " people," so far
as they were to be had, and that, if her friend really
wished to know, the vision of this same equivocal
quantity was what had haunted her during their pre
vious days, in museums and churches, and what was
again spoiling for her the pure taste of scenery. She
was all for scenery — yes; but she wanted it human
and personal,- and all she could say was that there
would be in London — would n't there ? — more of
that kind than anywhere else. She came back to her
idea that if it was n't for long — if nothing should
happen to be so for her — why the particular thing
she spoke of would probably have most to give her in
the time, would probably be less than anything else a
waste of her remainder. She produced this last con
sideration indeed with such gaiety that Mrs. String-
ham was not again disconcerted by it, was in fact
quite ready — if talk of early dying was in order — to
match it from her own future. Good, then; they
would eat and drink because of what might happen
to-morrow; and they would direct their course from
that moment with a view to such eating and drinking.

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BOOK THIRD

They ate and drank that night, in truth, as in the
spirit of this decision ; whereby the air, before they
separated, felt itself the clearer.

It had cleared perhaps to a view only too extensive
— extensive, that is, in proportion to the signs of life
presented. The idea of "people" was not so enter
tained on Milly's part as to connect itself with particu
lar persons, and the fact remained for each of the
ladies that they would, completely unknown, disem
bark at Dover amid the completely unknowing. They
had no relation already formed ; this plea Mrs. String-
ham put forward to see what it would produce. It
produced nothing at first but the observation on the
girl's side that what she had in mind was no thought
of society nor of scraping acquaintance; nothing was
further from her than to desire the opportunities re
presented for the compatriot in general by a trunkful
of "letters." It was n't a question, in short, of the
people the compatriot was after; it was the human,
the English picture itself, as they might see it in their
own way — the concrete world inferred so fondly
from what one had read and dreamed. Mrs. String-
ham did every justice to this concrete world, but when
later on an occasion chanced to present itself she
made a point of not omitting to remark that it might
be a comfort to know in advance one or two of the
human particles of its concretion. This still, however,
failed, in vulgar parlance, to "fetch" Milly, so that
she had presently to go all the way. "Haven't I
understood from you, for that matter, that you gave
Mr. Densher something of a promise ? "

There was a moment, on this, when Milly's look

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THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

had to be taken as representing one of two things —
either that she was completely vague about the pro
mise or that Mr. Densher's name itself started no train.
But she really could n't be so vague about the promise,
the partner of these hours quickly saw, without at
taching it to something; it had to be a promise to
somebody in particular to be so repudiated. In the
event, accordingly, she acknowledged Mr. Merton
Densher, the so unusually "bright" young English
man who had made his appearance in New York on
some special literary business — was n't it ? — shortly
before their departure, and who had been three or
four times in her house during the brief period be
tween her visit to Boston and her companion's subse
quent stay with her; but she required much remind
ing before it came back to her that she had mentioned
to this companion just afterwards the confidence ex
pressed by the personage in question in her never do
ing so dire a thing as to come to London without, as
the phrase was, looking a fellow up. She had left him
the enjoyment of his confidence, the form of which
might have appeared a trifle free — this she now re
asserted ; she had done nothing either to impair or to
enhance it; but she had also left Mrs. Stringham, in
the connexion and at the time, rather sorry to have
missed Mr. Densher. She had thought of him again
after that, the elder woman ; she had likewise gone so
far as to notice that Milly appeared not to have done
so — which the girl might easily have betrayed ; and,
interested as she was in everything that concerned
her, she had made out for herself, for herself only and
rather idly, that, but for interruptions, the young

136

BOOK THIRD

Englishman might have become a better acquaint
ance. His being an acquaintance at all was one of the
signs that in the first days had helped to place Milly,
as a young person with the world before her, for
sympathy and wonder. Isolated, unmothered, un
guarded, but with her other strong marks, her big
house, her big fortune, her big freedom, she had lately
begun to "receive," for all her few years, as an older
woman might have done — as was done, precisely, by
princesses who had public considerations to observe
and who came of age very early. If it was thus dis
tinct to Mrs. Stringham then that Mr. Densher had
gone off somewhere else in connexion with his errand
before her visit to New York, it had been also not un-
discoverable that he had come back for a day or two
later on, that is after her own second excursion — -
that he had in fine reappeared on a single occasion on
his way to the West : his way from Washington as she
believed, though he was out of sight at the time of her
joining her friend for their departure. It had n't
occurred to her before to exaggerate — it had not oc
curred to her that she could ; but she seemed to be
come aware to-night that there had been just enough
in this relation to meet, to provoke, the free concep
tion of a little more.

She presently put it that, at any rate, promise or no
promise, Milly would at a pinch be able, in London,
to act on his permission to make him a sign; to which
Milly replied with readiness that her ability, though
evident, would be none the less quite wasted, inas
much as the gentleman would to a certainty be still in
America. He had a great deal to do there — which he

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THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

would scarce have begun; and in fact she might very
well not have thought of London at all if she had n't
been sure he was n't yet near coming back. It was
perceptible to her companion that the moment our
young woman had so far committed herself she had a
sense of having overstepped; which was not quite
patched up by her saying the next minute, possibly
with a certain failure of presence of mind, that the
last thing she desired was the air of running after him.
Mrs. Stringham wondered privately what question
there could be of any such appearance — the danger
of which thus suddenly came up; but she said for the
time nothing of it — she only said other things : one
of which was, for instance, that if Mr. Densher was
away he was away, and this the end of it : also that of
course they must be discreet at any price. But what
was the measure of discretion, and how was one to be
sure ? So it was that, as they sat there, she produced
her own case: she had a possible tie with London,
which she desired as little to disown as she might wish
to risk presuming on it. She treated her companion,
in short, for their evening's end, to the story of Maud
Manningham, the odd but interesting English girl
who had formed her special affinity in the old days at
the Vevey school; whom she had written to, after
their separation, with a regularity that had at first fal
tered and then altogether failed, yet that had been for
the time quite a fine case of crude constancy; so that it
had in fact flickered up again of itself on the occasion
of the marriage of each. They had then once more
fondly, scrupulously written — Mrs. Lowder first;
and even another letter or two had afterwards passed.

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BOOK THIRD

This, however, had been the end — though with no
rupture, only a gentle drop : Maud Manningham had
made, she believed, a great marriage, while she her
self had made a small; on top of which, moreover,
distance, difference, diminished community and im
possible reunion had done the rest of the work. It was
but after all these years that reunion had begun to
show as possible — if the other party to it, that is,
should be still in existence. That was exactly what it
now appeared to our friend interesting to ascertain,
as, with one aid and another, she believed she might.
It was an experiment she would at all events now
make if Milly did n't object.

Milly in general objected to nothing, and though
she asked a question or two she raised no present plea.
Her questions — or at least her own answers to them
— kindled on Mrs. Stringham's part a backward
train : she had n't known till to-night how much she
remembered, or how fine it might be to see what had
become of large high-coloured Maud, florid, alien,
exotic — which had been just the spell — even to the
perceptions of youth. There was the danger — she
frankly touched it — that such a temperament
might n't have matured, with the years, all in the
sense of fineness : it was the sort of danger that, in re
newing relations after long breaks, one had always to
look in the face. To gather in strayed threads was
to take a risk — for which, however, she was prepared
if Milly was. The possible "fun," she confessed, was
by itself rather tempting; and she fairly sounded,
with this — wound up a little as she was — the note
of fun as the harmless final right of fifty years of mere

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THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

New England virtue. Among the things she was after
wards to recall was the indescribable look dropped on
her, at that, by her companion; she was still seated
there between the candles and before the finished
supper, while Milly moved about, and the look was
long to figure for her as an inscrutable comment on
her notion of freedom. Challenged, at any rate, as for
the last wise word, Milly showed perhaps, musingly,
charmingly, that, though her attention had been
mainly soundless, her friend's story — produced as a
resource unsuspected, a card from up the sleeve —
half-surprised, half-beguiled her. Since the matter,
such as it was, depended on that, she brought out
before she went to bed an easy, a light " Risk every
thing!"

This quality in it seemed possibly a little to deny
weight to Maud Lowder's evoked presence — as
Susan Stringham, still sitting up, became, in excited
reflexion, a trifle more conscious. Something deter
minant, when the girl had left her, took place in her
— nameless but, as soon as she had given way, co
ercive. It was as if she knew again, in this fulness of
time, that she had been, after Maud's marriage, just
sensibly outlived or, as people nowadays said, shunted.
Mrs. Lowder had left her behind, and on the occasion,
subsequently, of the corresponding date in her own
life — not the second, the sad one, with its dignity of
sadness, but the first, with the meagreness of its sup
posed felicity — she had been, in the same spirit,
almost patronisingly pitied. If that suspicion, even
when it had ceased to matter, had never quite died
out for her, there was doubtless some oddity in its

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BOOK THIRD

now offering itself as a link, rather than as another
break, in the chain ; and indeed there might well have
been for her a mood in which the notion of the de
velopment of patronage in her quondam schoolmate
would have settled her question in another sense. It
was actually settled — if the case be worth our analy
sis — by the happy consummation, the poetic justice,
the generous revenge, of her having at last something
to show. Maud, on their parting company, had ap
peared to have so much, and would now — for was n't
it also in general quite the rich law of English life ? —
have, with accretions, promotions, expansions, ever
so much more. Very good ; such things might be ; she
rose to the sense of being ready for them. Whatever
Mrs. Lowder might have to show — and one hoped
one did the presumptions all justice — she would
have nothing like Milly Theale, who constituted the
trophy producible by poor Susan. Poor Susan lin
gered late — till the candles were low, and as soon as
the table was cleared she opened her neat portfolio.
She had n't lost the old clue; there were connexions
she remembered, addresses she could try; so the thing
was to begin. She wrote on the spot.

BOOK FOURTH

IT had all gone so fast after this that Milly uttered
but the truth nearest to hand in saying to the gentle
man on her right — who was, by the same token, the
gentleman on her hostess's left — that she scarce
even then knew where she was : the words marking
her first full sense of a situation really romantic. They
were already dining, she and her friend, at Lancaster
Gate, and surrounded, as it seemed to her, with every
English accessory; though her consciousness of Mrs.
Lowder's existence, and still more of her remarkable
identity, had been of so recent and so sudden a birth.
Susie, as she was apt to call her companion for a
lighter change, had only had to wave a neat little
wand for the fairy-tale to begin at once; in conse
quence of which Susie now glittered — for, with Mrs.
Stringham's new sense of success, it came to that —
in the character of a fairy godmother. Milly had al
most insisted on dressing her, for the present occasion,
as one ; and it was no fault of the girl's if the good
lady had n't now appeared in a peaked hat, a short
petticoat and diamond shoe-buckles, brandishing the
magic crutch. The good lady bore herself in truth not
less contentedly than if these insignia had marked her
work; and Milly's observation to Lord Mark had
doubtless just been the result of such a light exchange
of looks with her as even the great length of the table

H5

THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

could n't baffle. There were twenty persons between
them, but this sustained passage was the sharpest
sequel yet to that other comparison of views during
the pause on the Swiss pass. It almost appeared to
Milly that their fortune had been unduly precipitated

— as if properly they were in the position of having
ventured on a small joke and found the answer out of
proportion grave. She could n't at this moment for
instance have said whether, with her quickened per
ceptions, she were more enlivened or oppressed ; and
the case might in fact have been serious had n't she,
by good fortune, from the moment the picture loomed,
quickly made up her mind that what finally most
concerned her was neither to seek nor to shirk, was
n't even to wonder too much, but was to let things
come as they would, since there was little enough
doubt of how they would go.

Lord Mark had been brought to her before dinner

— not by Mrs. Lowder, but by the handsome girl,
that lady's niece, who was now at the other end and
on the same side as Susie; he had taken her in, and
she meant presently to ask him about Miss Croy, the
handsome girl, actually offered to her sight — though
now in a splendid way — but for the second time.
The first time had been the occasion — only three
days before — of her calling at their hotel with her
aunt and then making, for our other two heroines, a
great impression of beauty and eminence. This im
pression had remained so with Milly that at present,
and although her attention was aware at the same
time of everything else, her eyes were mainly engaged
with Kate Croy when not engaged with Susie. That

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BOOK FOURTH

wonderful creature's eyes moreover readily met them
— she ranked now as a wonderful creature; and it
seemed part of the swift prosperity of the American
visitors that, so little in the original reckoning, she
should yet. appear conscious, charmingly, frankly
conscious, of possibilities of friendship for them.
Milly had easily and, as a guest, gracefully general
ised : English girls had a special strong beauty which
particularly showed in evening dress — above all
when, as was strikingly the case with this one, the
dress itself was what it should be. That observation
she had all ready for Lord Mark when they should,
after a little, get round to it. She seemed even now to
see that there might be a good deal they would get
round to ; the indication being that, taken up once for
all with her other neighbour, their hostess would
leave them much to themselves. Mrs. Lowder's other
neighbour was the Bishop of Murrum — a real bish
op, such as Milly had never seen, with a complicated
costume, a voice like an old-fashioned wind instru
ment, and a face all the portrait of a prelate ; while the
gentleman on our young lady's left, a gentleman thick-
necked, large and literal, who looked straight before
him and as if he were not to be diverted by vain words
from that pursuit, clearly counted as an offset to the
possession of Lord Mark. As Milly made out these
things — with a shade of exhilaration at the way she
already fell in — she saw how she was justified of her
plea for people and her love of life. It was n't then,
as the prospect seemed to show, so difficult to get into
the current, or to stand at any rate on the bank. It
was easy to get near — if they were near ; and yet the

THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

elements were different enough from any of her old
elements, and positively rich and strange.

She asked herself if her right-hand neighbour would
understand what she meant by such a description of
them should she throw it off; but another of the things
to which precisely her sense was awakened was that
no, decidedly, he would n't. It was nevertheless by
this time open to her that his line would be to be
clever ; and indeed, evidently, no little of the interest
was going to be in the fresh reference and fresh effect
both of people's cleverness and of their simplicity.
She thrilled, she consciously flushed, and all to turn
pale again, with the certitude — it had never been so
present — that she should find herself completely in
volved : the very air of the place, the pitch of the occa
sion, had for her both so sharp a ring and so deep an
undertone. The smallest things, the faces, the hands,
the jewels of the women, the sound of words, espe
cially of names, across the table, the shape of the
forks, the arrangement of the flowers, the attitude of
the servants, the walls of the room, were all touches in
a picture and denotements in a play; and they marked
for her moreover her alertness of vision. She had
never, she might well believe, been in such a state of
vibration; her sensibility was almost too sharp for her
comfort: there were for example more indications
than she could reduce to order in the manner of the
friendly niece, who struck her as distinguished and
interesting, as in fact surprisingly genial. This young
woman's type had, visibly, other possibilities; yet
here, of its own free movement, it had already
sketched a relation. Were they, Miss Croy and she,

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BOOK FOURTH

to take up the tale where their two elders had left it off
so many years before ? — were they to find they liked
each other and to try for themselves whether a scheme
of constancy on more modern lines could be worked ?
She had doubted, as they came to England, of Maud
Manningham, had believed her a broken reed and a
vague resource, had seen their dependence on her as
a state of mind that would have been shamefully silly
— so far as it was dependence — had they wished to
do anything so inane as "get into society." To have
made their pilgrimage all for the sake of such society
as Mrs. Lowder might have in reserve for them —
that did n't bear thinking of at all, and she herself
had quite chosen her course for curiosity about other
matters. She would have described this curiosity as a
desire to see the places she had read about, and that
description of her motive she was prepared to give her
neighbour — even though, as a consequence of it, he
should find how little she had read. It was almost at
present as if her poor prevision had been rebuked by
the majesty — she could scarcely call it less — of the
event, or at all events by the commanding character
of the two figures (she could scarcely call that less
either) mainly presented. Mrs. Lowder and her niece,
however dissimilar, had at least in common that each
was a great reality. That was true, primarily, of the
aunt — so true that Milly wondered how her own
companion had arrived in other years at so odd an
alliance; yet she none the less felt Mrs. Lowder as a
person of whom the mind might in two or three days
roughly make the circuit. She would sit there massive
at least while one attempted it; whereas Miss Croy,

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THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

the handsome girl, would indulge in incalculable
movements that might interfere with one's tour. She
was the amusing resisting ominous fact, none the less,
and each other person and thing was just such a fact;
and it served them right, no doubt, the pair of them,
for having rushed into their adventure.

Lord Mark's intelligence meanwhile, however, had
met her own quite sufficiently to enable him to tell her
how little he could clear up her situation. He ex
plained, for that matter — or at least he hinted —
that there was no such thing to-day in London as
saying where any one was. Every one was every
where — nobody was anywhere. He should be put
to it — yes, frankly — to give a name of any sort or
kind to their hostess's "set." Was it a set at all, or
was n't it, and were there not really no such things
as sets in the place any more ? — was there anything
but the groping and pawing, that of the vague billows
of some great greasy sea in mid-Channel, of masses of
bewildered people trying to "get" they did n't know
what or where ? He threw out the question, which
seemed large ; Milly felt that at the end of five minutes
he had thrown out a great many, though he followed
none more than a step or two ; perhaps he would prove
suggestive, but he helped her as yet to no discrimina
tions : he spoke as if he had given them up from too
much knowledge. He was thus at the opposite ex
treme from herself, but, as a consequence of it, also
wandering and lost; and he was furthermore, for all
his temporary incoherence, to which she guessed there
would be some key, as packed a concretion as either
Mrs. Lowder or Kate. The only light in which he

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BOOK FOURTH

placed the former of these ladies was that of an ex
traordinary woman — a most extraordinary woman,
and "the more extraordinary the more one knows
her," while of the latter he said nothing for the mo
ment but that she was tremendously, yes, quite tre
mendously, good-looking. It was some time, she
thought, before his talk showed his cleverness, and
yet each minute she believed in that mystery more,
quite apart from what her hostess had told her on
first naming him. Perhaps he was one of the cases
she had heard of at home — those characteristic cases
of people in England who concealed their play of
mind so much more than they advertised it. Even
Mr. Densher a little did that. And what made Lord
Mark, at any rate, so real either, when this was a
trick he had apparently so mastered ? His type some
how, as by a life, a need, an intention of its own, took
all care for vividness off his hands; that was enough.
It was difficult to guess his age — whether he were a
young man who looked old or an old man who looked
young; it seemed to prove nothing, as against other
things, that he was bald and, as might have been said,
slightly stale, or, more delicately perhaps, dry : there
was such a fine little fidget of preoccupied life in him,
and his eyes, at moments — though it was an appear
ance they could suddenly lose — were as candid and
clear as those of a pleasant boy. Very neat, very light,
and so fair that there was little other indication of his
moustache than his constantly feeling it — which was
again boyish — he would have affected her as the
most intellectual person present if he had not affected
her as the most frivolous. The latter quality was

THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

rather in his look than in anything else, though he
constantly wore his double eye-glass, which was, much
more, Bostonian and thoughtful.

The idea of his frivolity had, no doubt, to do with
his personal designation, which represented — as yet,
for our young woman, a little confusedly — a con
nexion with an historic patriciate, a class that in turn,
also confusedly, represented an affinity with a social
element she had never heard otherwise described
than as "fashion." The supreme social element in
New York had never known itself but as reduced to
that category, and though Milly was aware that, as
applied to a territorial and political aristocracy, the
label was probably too simple, she had for the time
none other at hand. She presently, it is true, enriched
her idea with the perception that her interlocutor was
indifferent ; yet this, indifferent as aristocracies notori
ously were, saw her but little further, inasmuch as
she felt that, in the first place, he would much rather
get on with her than not, and in the second was only
thinking of too many matters of his own. If he kept
her in view on the one hand and kept so much else on
the other — the way he crumbed up his bread was a
proof — why did he hover before her as a potentially
insolent noble ? She could n't have answered the
question, and it was precisely one of those that
swarmed. They were complicated, she might fairly
have said, by his visibly knowing, having known from
afar off, that she was a stranger and an American,
and by his none the less making no more of it than if
she and her like were the chief of his diet. He took
her, kindly enough, but imperturbably, irreclaimably,

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for granted, and it would n't in the least help that she
herself knew him, as quickly, for having been in her
country and threshed it out. There would be nothing
for her to explain or attenuate or brag about; she
could neither escape nor prevail by her strangeness;
he would have, for that matter, on such a subject,
more to tell her than to learn from her. She might
learn from him why she was so different from the
handsome girl — which she did n't know, being
merely able to feel it ; or at any rate might learn from
him why the handsome girl was so different from her.
On these lines, however, they would move later;
the lines immediately laid down were, in spite of his
vagueness for his own convenience, definite enough.
She was already, he observed to her, thinking what
she should say on her other side — which was what
Americans were always doing. She need n't in con
science say anything at all; but Americans never
knew that, nor ever, poor creatures, yes (she had in
terposed the " poor creatures ! ") what not to do. The
burdens they took on — the things, positively, they
made an affair of! This easy and after all friendly
jibe at her race was really for her, on her new friend's
part, the note of personal recognition so far as she re
quired it; and she gave him a prompt and conscious
example of morbid anxiety by insisting that her desire
to be, herself, "lovely" all round was justly founded
on the lovely way Mrs. Lowder had met her. He was
directly interested in that, and it was not till after
wards she fully knew how much more information
about their friend he had taken than given. Here
again for instance was a characteristic note : she had,

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on the spot, with her first plunge into the obscure
depths of a society constituted from far back, en
countered the interesting phenomenon of compli
cated, of possibly sinister motive. However, Maud
Manningham (her name, even in her presence, some
how still fed the fancy) had, all the same, been lovely,
and one was going to meet her now quite as far on as
one had one's self been met. She had been with them
at their hotel — they were a pair — before even they
had supposed she could have got their letter. Of
course indeed they had written in advance, but they
had followed that up very fast. She had thus engaged
them to dine but two days later, and on the morrow
again, without waiting for a return visit, without
waiting for anything, she had called with her niece.
It was as if she really cared for them, and it was
magnificent fidelity — fidelity to Mrs. Stringham, her
own companion and Mrs. Lowder's former school
mate, the lady with the charming face and the rather
high dress down there at the end.

Lord Mark took in through his nippers these
balanced attributes of Susie. " But is n't Mrs. String-
ham's fidelity then equally magnificent ? "

"Well, it's a beautiful sentiment; but it is n't as if
she had anything to give."

"Hasn't she got you?" Lord Mark asked with
out excessive delay.

"Me — to give Mrs. Lowder?" Milly had clearly
not yet seen herself in the light of such an offering.
"Oh I'm rather a poor present; and I don't feel as
if, even at that, I had as yet quite been given."

"You 've been shown, and if our friend has jumped
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at you it comes to the same thing." He made his
jokes, Lord Mark, without amusement for himself;
yet it was n't that he was grim. "To be seen, you
must recognise, is, for you, to be jumped at; and, if
it's a question of being shown, here you are again.
Only it has now been taken out of your friend's hands ;
it 's Mrs. Lowder already who 's getting the benefit.
Look round the table, and you '11 make out, I think,
that you're being, from top to bottom, jumped at."

"Well then," said Milly, "I seem also to feel that I
like it better than being made fun of."

It was one of the things she afterwards saw —
Milly was for ever seeing things afterwards — that
her companion had here had some way of his own,
quite unlike any one's else, of assuring her of his con
sideration. She wondered how he had done it, for he
had neither apologised nor protested. She said to her
self at any rate that he had led her on ; and what was
most odd was the question by which he had done so.
" Does she know much about you ? "

"No, she just likes us."

Even for this his travelled lordship, seasoned and
saturated, had no laugh. "I mean you particularly.
Has that lady with the charming face, which is charm
ing, told her ? "

Milly cast about. "Told her what?"

"Everything."

This, with the way he dropped it, again consider
ably moved her — made her feel for a moment that
as a matter of course she was a subject for disclos
ures. But she quickly found her answer. " Oh as for
that you must ask her."

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THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

"Your clever companion?"

"Mrs. Lowder."

He replied to this that their hostess was a person
with whom there were certain liberties one never
took, but that he was none the less fairly upheld, in
asmuch as she was for the most part kind to him and
as, should he be very good for a while, she would
probably herself tell him. "And I shall have at any
rate in the meantime the interest of seeing what she
does with you. That will teach me more or less, you
see, how much she knows."

Milly followed this — it was lucid, but it suggested
something apart. "How much does she know about
you?"

"Nothing," said Lord Mark serenely. "But that
does n't matter — for what she does with me." And
then as to anticipate Milly's question about the nat
ure of such doing: "This for instance — turning me
straight on for you."

The girl thought. "And you mean she would n't
if she did know — ? "

He met it as if it were really a point. "No. I be
lieve, to do her justice, she still would. So you can be
easy."

Milly had the next instant then acted on the per
mission. " Because you 're even at the worst the best
thing she has ? "

With this he was at last amused. "I was till you
came. You're the best now."

It was strange his words should have given her the
sense of his knowing, but it was positive that they did
so, and to the extent of making her believe them,

1S6

BOOK FOURTH

though still with wonder. That really from this first
of their meetings was what was most to abide with
her : she accepted almost helplessly — she surrendered
so to the inevitable in it — being the sort of thing, as
he might have said, that he at least thoroughly be
lieved he had, in going about, seen enough of for all
practical purposes. Her submission was naturally
moreover not to be impaired by her learning later on
that he had paid at short intervals, though at a time
apparently just previous to her own emergence from
the obscurity of extreme youth, three separate visits
to New York, where his nameable friends and his
contrasted contacts had been numerous. His impres
sion, his recollection of the whole mixed quantity,
was still visibly rich. It had helped him to place her,
and she was more and more sharply conscious of hav
ing — as with the door sharply slammed upon her
and the guard's hand raised in signal to the train —
been popped into the compartment in which she was
to travel for him. It was a use of her that many a girl
would have been doubtless quick to resent; and the
kind of mind that thus, in our young lady, made all
for mere seeing and taking is precisely one of the
charms of our subject. Milly had practically just
learned from him, had made out, as it were, from her
rumbling compartment, that he gave her the highest
place among their friend's actual properties. She was
a success, that was what it came to, he presently as
sured her, and this was what it was to be a success ; it
always happened before one could know it. One's
ignorance was in fact often the greatest part of it.
"You haven't had time yet," he said; "this is no-

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thing. But you'll see. You'll see everything. You
c an, you know — everything you dream of."

He made her more and more wonder; she almost
felt as if he were showing her visions while he spoke ;
and strangely enough, though it was visions that had
drawn her on, she had n't had them in connexion -
that is in such preliminary and necessary connexion

— with such a face as Lord Mark's, such eyes and
such a voice, such a tone and such a manner. He had
for an instant the effect of making her ask herself if
she were after all going to be afraid ; so distinct was it
for fifty seconds that a fear passed over her. There
they were again — yes, certainly : Susie's overture to
Mrs. Lowder had been their joke, but they had pressed
in that gaiety an electric bell that continued to sound.
Positively while she sat there she had the loud rattle
in her ears, and she wondered during these moments
why the others did n't hear it. They did n't stare,
they did n't smile, and the fear in her that I speak of
was but her own desire to stop it. That dropped,
however, as if the alarm itself had ceased; she seemed
to have seen in a quick though tempered glare that
there were two courses for her, one to leave London
again the first thing in the morning, the other to do
nothing at all. Well, she would do nothing at all; she
was already doing it; more than that, she had already
done it, and her chance was gone. She gave herself up

— she had the strangest sense, on the spot, of so de
ciding; for she had turned a corner before she went
on again with Lord Mark. Inexpressive but in
tensely significant, he met as no one else could have
done the very question she had suddenly put to Mrs.

BOOK FOURTH

Stringham on the Briinig. Should she have it, what
ever she did have, that question had been, for long ?
"Ah so possibly not," her neighbour appeared to
reply; "therefore, don't you see? I'm the way." It
was vivid that he might be, in spite of his absence
of flourish; the way being doubtless just in that
absence. The handsome girl, whom she did n't lose
sight of and who, she felt, kept her also in view —
Mrs. Lowder's striking niece would perhaps be the
way as well, for in her too was the absence of flourish,
though she had little else, so far as one could tell, in
common with Lord Mark. Yet how indeed could one
tell, what did one understand, and of what was one,
for that matter, provisionally conscious but of their
being somehow together in what they represented ?
Kate Croy, fine but friendly, looked over at her as
really with a guess at Lord Mark's effect on her. If
she could guess this effect what then did she know
about it and in what degree had she felt it herself?
Did that represent, as between them, anything par
ticular, and should she have to count with them as
duplicating, as intensifying by a mutual intelligence,
the relation into which she was sinking ? Nothing
was so odd as that she should have to recognise so
quickly in each of these glimpses of an instant the
various signs of a relation; and this anomaly itself,
had she had more time to give to it, might well, might
almost terribly have suggested to her that her doom
was to live fast. It was queerly a question of the short
run and the consciousness proportionately crowded.
These were immense excursions for the spirit of a
young person at Mrs. Lowder's mere dinner-party;

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THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

but what was so significant and so admonitory as the
fact of their being possible ? What could they have
been but just a part, already, of the crowded con
sciousness ? And it was just a part likewise that while
plates were changed and dishes presented and periods
in the banquet marked; while appearances insisted
and phenomena multiplied and words reached her
from here and there like plashes of a slow thick tide ;
while Mrs. Lowder grew somehow more stout and
more instituted and Susie, at her distance and in com
parison, more thinly improvised and more different
— different, that is, from every one and every thing :
it was just a part that while this process went forward
our young lady alighted, came back, taking up her
destiny again as if she had been able by a wave or
two of her wings to place herself briefly in sight of an
alternative to it. Whatever it' was it had showed in
this brief interval as better than the alternative; and it
now presented itself altogether in the image and in
the place in which she had left it. The image was
that of her being, as Lord Mark had declared, a suc
cess. This depended more or less of course on his
idea of the thing — into which at present, however,
she would n't go. But, renewing soon, she had asked
him what he meant then that Mrs. Lowder would do
with her, and he had replied that this might safely
be left. "She'll get back," he pleasantly said, "her
money." He could say it too — which was singular
— without affecting her either as vulgar or as " nasty " ;
and he had soon explained himself by adding: "No
body here, you know, does anything for nothing."
"Ah if you mean that we shall reward her as hard
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BOOK FOURTH

as ever we can, nothing is more certain. But she 's an
idealist," Milly continued, "and idealists, in the long
run, I think, dont feel that they lose."

Lord Mark seemed, within the limits of his enthu
siasm, to find this charming. "Ah she strikes you as
an idealist ?"

"She idealises us, my friend and me, absolutely.
She sees us in a light," said Milly. "That's all I've
got to hold on by. So don't deprive me of it."

"I would n't think of such a thing for the world.
But do you suppose," he continued as if it were sud
denly important for him — "do you suppose she sees
me in a light ? "

She neglected his question for a little, partly be
cause her attention attached itself more and more to
the handsome girl, partly because, placed so near
their hostess, she wished not to show as discussing
her too freely. Mrs. Lowder, it was true, steering in
the other quarter a course in which she called at sub
jects as if they were islets in an archipelago, con
tinued to allow them their ease, and Kate Croy at the
same time steadily revealed herself as interesting.
Milly in fact found of a sudden her ease — found it
all as she bethought herself that what Mrs. Lowder
was really arranging for was a report on her quality
and, as perhaps might be said her value, from, Lord
Mark. She wished him, the wonderful lady, to have
no pretext for not knowing what he thought of Miss
Theale. Why his judgement so mattered remained to
be seen; but it was this divination that in any case
now determined Milly's rejoinder. "No. She knows
you. She has probably reason to. And you all here

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THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

know each other — I see that — so far as you know
anything. You know what you're used to, and it's
your being used to it — that, and that only — that
makes you. But there are things you don't know."

He took it in as if it might fairly, to do him justice,
be a point. "Things that / don't — with all the
pains I take and the way I've run about the world
to leave nothing unlearned ? "

Milly thought, and it was perhaps the very truth
of his claim — its not being negligible — that sharp
ened her impatience and thereby her wit. "You're
blase, but you 're not enlightened. You 're familiar
with everything, but conscious really of nothing.
What I mean is that you 've no imagination."

Lord Mark at this threw back his head, ranging
with his eyes the opposite side of the room and show
ing himself at last so much more flagrantly diverted
that it fairly attracted their hostess's notice. Mrs.
Lowder, however, only smiled on Milly for a sign
that something racy was what she had expected, and
resumed, with a splash of her screw, her cruise among
the islands. "Oh I've heard that," the young man
replied, "before!"

"There it is then. You've heard everything be
fore. You 've heard me of course before, in my coun
try, often enough."

"Oh never too often," he protested. "I'm sure 1
hope I shall still hear you again and again."

" But what good then has it done you ? " the girl
went on as if now frankly to amuse him.

"Oh you'll see when you know me."

"But most assuredly I shall never know you."
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BOOK FOURTH

"Then that will be exactly," he laughed, "the
good!"

If it established thus that they could n't or would n't
mix, why did Milly none the less feel through it a per
verse quickening of the relation to which she had
been in spite of herself appointed ? What queerer
consequence of their not mixing than their talking
— for it was what they had arrived at — almost
intimately ? She wished to get away from him, or in
deed, much rather, away from herself so far as she
was present to him. She saw already — wonderful
creature, after all, herself too — that there would be
a good deal more of him to come for her, and that the
special sign of their intercourse would be to keep her
self out of the question. Everything else might come
in — only never that; and with such an arrangement
they would perhaps even go far. This in fact might
quite have begun, on the spot, with her returning
again to the topic of the handsome girl. If she was
to keep herself out she could naturally best do so by
putting in somebody else. She accordingly put in
Kate Croy, being ready to that extent — as she was
not at all afraid for her — to sacrifice her if necessary.
Lord Mark himself, for that matter, had made it easy
by saying a little while before that no one among them
did anything for nothing. "What then" — she was
aware of being abrupt — "does Miss Croy, if she's
so interested, do it for ?' What has she to gain by her
lovely welcome ? Look at her now ! " Milly broke out
with characteristic freedom of praise, though pulling
herself up also with a compunctious "Oh!" as the
direction thus given to their eyes happened to coincide

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THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

with a turn of Kate's face to them. All she had meant
to do was to insist that this face was fine; but what she
had in fact done was to renew again her effect of
showing herself to its possessor as conjoined with
Lord Mark for some interested view of it. He had,
however, promptly met her question.

"To gain? Why your acquaintance."

"Well, what's my acquaintance to her? She can
care for me — she must feel that — only by being
sorry for me; and that's why she's lovely: to be al
ready willing to take the trouble to be. It 's the height
of the disinterested."

There were more things in this than one that Lord
Mark might have taken up; but in a minute he had
made his choice. "Ah then I'm nowhere, for I'm
afraid / 'ra not sorry for you in the least. What do you
make then," he asked, "of your success?"

" Why just the great reason of all. It 's just because
our friend there sees it that she pities me. She under
stands," Milly said; "she's better than any of you.
She's beautiful."

He appeared struck with this at last — with the
point the girl made of it; to which she came back even
after a diversion created by a dish presented between
them. "Beautiful in character, I see. Is she so ? You
must tell me about her."

Milly wondered. " But have n't you known her
longer than I ? Have n't you seen her for yourself? "

"No — I've failed with her. It's no use. I don't
make her out. And I assure you I really should like
to." His assurance had in fact for his companion a
positive suggestion of sincerity; he affected her as

BOOK FOURTH

now saying something he did feel; and she was the
more struck with it as she was still conscious of the
failure even of curiosity he had just shown in respect
to herself. She had meant something — though in
deed for herself almost only — in speaking of their
friend's natural pity; it had doubtless been a note of
questionable taste, but it had quavered out in spite of
her and he had n't so much as cared to enquire "Why
'natural'?" Not that it wasn't really much better
for her that he should n't : explanations would in
truth have taken her much too far. Only she now
perceived that, in comparison, her word about this
other person really "drew" him; and there were
things in that probably, many things, as to which
she would learn more and which glimmered there
already as part and parcel of that larger "real" with
which, in her new situation, she was to be beguiled.
It was in fact at the very moment, this element, not
absent from what Lord Mark was further saying.
"So you're wrong, you see, as to our knowing all
about each other. There are cases where we break
down. I at any rate give her up — up, that is, to you.
You must do her for me — tell me, I mean, when you
know more. You '11 notice," he pleasantly wound up,
"that I've confidence in you."

"Why should n't you have ?" Milly asked, observ
ing in this, as she thought, a fine, though for such a
man a surprisingly artless, fatuity. It was as if there
might have been a question of her falsifying for the
sake of her own show — that is of the failure of her
honesty to be proof against her desire to keep well
with him herself. She did n't, none the less, other-

THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

wise protest against his remark; there was something
else she was occupied in seeing. It was the handsome
girl alone, one of his own species and his own society,
who had made him feel uncertain; of his certainties
about a mere little American, a cheap exotic, imported
almost wholesale and whose habitat, with its condi
tions of climate, growth and cultivation, its immense
profusion but its few varieties and thin development,
he was perfectly satisfied. The marvel was too that
Milly understood his satisfaction — feeling she ex
pressed the truth in presently saying: "Of course; I
make out that she must be difficult; just as I see that
I myself must be easy." And that was what, for all
the rest of this occasion, remained with her — as the
most interesting thing that could remain. She was
more and more content herself to be easy; she would
have been resigned, even had it been brought
straighter home to her, to passing for a cheap exotic.
Provisionally, at any rate, that protected her wish to
keep herself, with Lord Mark, in abeyance. They
had all affected her as inevitably knowing each other,
and if the handsome girl's place among them was
something even their initiation could n't deal with —
why then she would indeed be a quantity.

II

THAT sense of quantities, separate or mixed, was re
ally, no doubt, what most prevailed at first for our
slightly gasping American pair; it found utterance
for them in their frequent remark to each other that
they had no one but themselves to thank. It dropped
from Milly more than once that if she had ever known
it was so easy — ! though her exclamation mostly
ended without completing her idea. This, however,
was a trifle to Mrs. Stringham, who cared little
whether she meant that in this case she would have
come sooner. She could n't have come sooner, and
she perhaps on the contrary meant — for it would
have been like her — that she would n't have come
at all ; why it was so easy being at any rate a matter as
to which her companion had begun quickly to pick up
views. Susie kept some of these lights for the present
to herself, since, freely communicated, they might
have been a little disturbing; with which, moreover,
the quantities that we speak of as surrounding the
two ladies were in many cases quantities of things
— and of other things — to talk about. Their imme
diate lesson accordingly was that they just had been
caught up by the incalculable strength of a wave that
was actually holding them aloft and that would nat
urally dash them wherever it liked. They mean
while, we hasten to add, made the best of their pre
carious position, and if Milly had had no other help

THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

for it she would have found not a little in the sight of
Susan Shepherd's state. The girl had had nothing to
say to her, for three days, about the "success" an
nounced by Lord Mark — which they saw, besides,
otherwise established; she was too taken up, too
touched, by Susie's own exaltation. Susie glowed in
the light of her justified faith; everything had hap
pened that she had been acute enough to think least
probable; she had appealed to a possible delicacy in
Maud Manningham — a delicacy, mind you, but
barely possible — and her appeal had been met in a
way that was an honour to human nature. This
proved sensibility of the lady of Lancaster Gate per
formed verily for both our friends during these first
days the office of a fine floating gold-dust, something
that threw over the prospect a harmonising blur. The
forms, the colours behind it were strong and deep —
we have seen how they already stood out for Milly;
but nothing, comparatively, had had so much of the
dignity of truth as the fact of Maud's fidelity to a
sentiment. That was what Susie was proud of, much
more than of her great place in the world, which she
was moreover conscious of not as yet wholly measur
ing. That was what was more vivid even than her
being — in senses more worldly and in fact almost in
the degree of a revelation — English and distinct and
positive, with almost no inward but with the finest
outward resonance.

>-£usan Shepherd's word for her, again and again,
was that she was " large"; yet it was not exactly a
case, as to the soul, of echoing chambers : she might
have been likened rather to a capacious receptacle,

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BOOK FOURTH

originally perhaps loose, but now drawn as tightly as
possible over its accumulated contents — a packed
mass, for her American admirer, of curious detail.
When the latter good lady, at home, had handsomely
figured her friends as not small — which was the way
she mostly figured them — there was a certain impli
cation that they were spacious because they were
empty. Mrs. Lowder, by a different law, was spacious
because she was full, because she had something in
common, even in repose, with a projectile, of great
size, loaded and ready for use. That indeed, to Susie's
romantic mind, announced itself as half the charm of
their renewal — a charm as of sitting in springtime,
during a long peace, on the daisied grassy bank of
some great slumbering fortress. True to her psycho
logical instincts, certainly, Mrs. Stringham had noted
that the "sentiment " she rejoiced in on her old school
mate's part was all a matter of action and movement,
was not, save for the interweaving of a more frequent
plump "dearest" than she would herself perhaps
have used, a matter of much other embroidery. She
brooded with interest on this further mark of race,
feeling in her own spirit a different economy. The
joy, for her, was to know why she acted — the reason
was half the business; whereas with Mrs. Lowder
there might have been no reason: "why" was the
trivial seasoning-substance, the vanilla or the nut
meg, omittable from the nutritive pudding without
spoiling it. Mrs. Lowder's desire was clearly sharp
that their young companions should also prosper to
gether; and Mrs. Stringham's account of it all to
Milly, during the first days, was that when, at Lan-

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THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

caster Gate, she was not occupied in telling, as it were,
about her, she was occupied in hearing much of the
history of her hostess's brilliant niece.

They had plenty, on these lines, the two elder wo
men, to give and to take, and it was even not quite
clear to the pilgrim from Boston that what she should
mainly have arranged for in London was not a series
of thrills for herself. She had a bad conscience, in
deed almost a sense of immorality, in having to re
cognise that she was, as she said, carried away. She
laughed to Milly when she also said that she did n't
know where it would end ; and the principle of her
uneasiness was that Mrs. Lowder's life bristled for
her with elements that she was really having to look
at for the first time. They represented, she believed,
the world, the world that, as a consequence of the
cold shoulder turned to it by the Pilgrim Fathers,
had never yet boldly crossed to Boston — it would
surely have sunk the stoutest Cunarder — and she
could n't pretend that she faced the prospect simply
because Milly had had a caprice. She was in the act
herself of having one, directed precisely to their pre
sent spectacle. She could but seek strength in the
thought that she had never had one — or had never
yielded to one, which came to the same thing — be
fore. The sustaining sense of it all moreover as literary
material — that quite dropped from her. She must
wait, at any rate, she should see : it struck her, so far
as she had got, as vast, obscure, lurid. She reflected
in the watches of the night that she was probably just
going to love it for itself — that is for itself and Milly.
The odd thing was that she could think of Milly's

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loving it without dread — or with dread at least not
on the score of conscience, only on the score of peace.
It was a mercy at all events, for the hour, that their
two spirits jumped together.

While, for this first week that followed their dinner,
she drank deep at Lancaster Gate, her companion
was no less happily, appeared to be indeed on the
whole quite as romantically, provided for. The hand
some English girl from the heavy English house had
been as a figure in a picture stepping by magic out of
its frame : it was a case in truth for which Mrs. String-
ham presently found the perfect image. She had lost
none of her grasp, but quite the contrary, of that
other conceit in virtue of which Milly was the wan
dering princess : so what could be more in harmony
now than to see the princess waited upon at the city
gate by the worthiest maiden, the chosen daughter of
the burgesses ? It was the real again, evidently, the
amusement of the meeting for the princess too ; prin
cesses living for the most part, in such an appeased
way, on the plane of mere elegant representation.
That was why they pounced, at city gates, on deputed
flower-strewing damsels; that was why, after effigies,
processions and other stately games, frank human
company was pleasant to them. Kate Croy really
presented herself to Milly — the latter abounded for
Mrs. Stringham in accounts of it — as the wondrous
London girl in person (by what she had conceived,
from far back, of the London girl; conceived from
the tales of travellers and the anecdotes of New York,
from old porings over Punch and a liberal acquaint
ance with the fiction of the day). The only thing was

THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

that she was nicer, since the creature in question had
rather been, to our young woman, an image of dread.
She had thought of her, at her best, as handsome just
as Kate was, with turns of head and tones of voice,
felicities of stature and attitude, things " put on " and,
for that matter, put off, all the marks of the product
of a packed society who should be at the same time
the heroine of a strong story. She placed this striking
young person from the first in a story, saw her, by a
necessity of the imagination, for a heroine, felt it the
only character in which she would n't be wasted ; and
this in spite of the heroine's pleasant abruptness, her
forbearance from gush, her umbrellas and jackets
and shoes — as these things sketched themselves to
Milly — and something rather of a breezy boy in the
carriage of her arms and the occasional freedom of
her slang.

When Milly had settled that the extent of her good
will itself made her shy, she had found for the mo
ment quite a sufficient key, and they were by that
time thoroughly afloat together. This might well
have been the happiest hour they were to know, at
tacking in friendly independence their great London
— the London of shops and streets and suburbs
oddly interesting to Milly, as well as of museums,
monuments, "sights" oddly unfamiliar to Kate,
while their elders pursued a separate course; these
two rejoicing not less in their intimacy and each think
ing the other's young woman a great acquisition for
her own. Milly expressed to Susan Shepherd more
than once that Kate had some secret, some smothered
trouble, besides all the rest of her history; and that if

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she had so good-naturedly helped Mrs. Lowder to
meet them this was exactly to create a diversion, to
give herself something else to think about. But on the
case thus postulated our young American had as yet
had no light : she only felt that when the light should
come it would greatly deepen the colour; and she
liked to think she was prepared for anything. What
she already knew moreover was full, to her vision,
of English, of eccentric, of Thackerayan character
— Kate Croy having gradually become not a little
explicit on the subject of her situation, her past, her
present, her general predicament, her small success,
up to the present hour, in contenting at the same time
her father, her sister, her aunt and herself. It was
Milly's subtle guess, imparted to her Susie, that the
girl had somebody else as well, as yet unnamed, to
content — it being manifest that such a creature
could n't help having; a creature not perhaps, if one
would, exactly formed to inspire passions, since that
always implied a certain silliness, but essentially
seen, by the admiring eye of friendship, under the
clear shadow of some probably eminent male interest.
The clear shadow, from whatever source projected,
hung at any rate over Milly's companion the whole
week, and Kate Croy's handsome face smiled out of
it, under bland skylights, in the presence alike of old
masters passive in their glory and of thoroughly new
ones, the newest, who bristled restlessly with pins
and brandished snipping shears.

It was meanwhile a pretty part of the intercourse
of these young ladies that each thought the other
more remarkable than herself — that each thought

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herself, or assured the other she did, a comparatively
dusty object and the other a favourite of nature and
of fortune and covered thereby with the freshness of
the morning. Kate was amused, amazed, at the way
her friend insisted on "taking" her, and Milly won
dered if Kate were sincere in finding her the most
extraordinary — quite apart from her being the most
charming — person she had come across. They had
talked, in long drives, and quantities of history had
not been wanting — in the light of which Mrs. Low-
der's niece might superficially seem to have had the
best of the argument. Her visitor's American refer
ences, with their bewildering immensities, their con
founding moneyed New York, their excitements of
high pressure, their opportunities of wild freedom,
their record of used-up relatives, parents, clever
eager fair slim brothers — these the most loved — all
engaged, as well as successive superseded guardians,
in a high extravagance of speculation and dissipation
that had left this exquisite being her black dress, her
white face and her vivid hair as the mere last broken
link: such a picture quite threw into the shade the
brief biography, however sketchily amplified, of a
mere middle-class nobody in Bayswater. And though
that indeed might be but a Bayswater way of putting
it, in addition to which Milly was in the stage of in
terest in Bayswater ways, this critic so far prevailed
that, like Mrs. Stringham herself, she fairly got her
companion to accept from her that she was quite the
nearest approach to a practical princess Bayswater
could hope ever to know. It was a fact — it became
one at the end of three days — that Milly actually

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began to borrow from the handsome girl a sort of view
of her state; the handsome girl's impression of it was
clearly so sincere. This impression was a tribute,
a tribute positively to power, power the source of
which was the last thing Kate treated as a mystery.
There were passages, under all their skylights, the
succession of their shops being large, in which the
latter's easy yet the least bit dry manner sufficiently
gave out that if she had had so deep a pocket — !

It was not moreover by any means with not having
the imagination of expenditure that she appeared to
charge her friend, but with not having the imagina
tion of terror, of thrift, the imagination or in any de
gree the habit of a conscious dependence on others.
Such moments, when all Wigmore Street, for in
stance, seemed to rustle about and the pale girl her
self to be facing the different rustlers, usually so un
discriminated, as individual Britons too, Britons
personal, parties to a relation and perhaps even in
trinsically remarkable — such moments in especial
determined for Kate a perception of the high happi
ness of her companion's liberty. Milly's range was
thus immense; she had to ask nobody for anything,
to refer nothing to any one ; her freedom, her fortune
and her fancy were her law ; an obsequious world sur
rounded her, she could sniff up at every step its
fumes. And Kate, these days, was altogether in the
phase of forgiving her so much bliss; in the phase
moreover of believing that, should they continue to
go on together, she would abide in that generosity.
She had at such a point as this no suspicion of a rift
within the lute — by which we mean not only none

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of anything's coming between them, but none of any
definite flaw in so much clearness of quality. Yet,
all the same, if Milly, at Mrs. Lowder's banquet, had
described herself to Lord Mark as kindly used by the
young woman on the other side because of some
faintly-felt special propriety in it, so there really did
match with this, privately, on the young woman's
part, a feeling not analysed but divided, a latent im
pression that Mildred Theale was not, after all, a
person to change places, to change even chances with.
Kate, verily, would perhaps not quite have known
what she meant by this discrimination, and she came
near naming it only when she said to herself that,
rich as Milly was, one probably would n't — which
was singular — ever hate her for it. The handsome
girl had, with herself, these felicities and crudities:
it was n't obscure to her that, without some very
particular reason to help, it might have proved a test
of one's philosophy not to be irritated by a mistress of
millions, or whatever they were, who, as a girl, so
easily might have been, like herself, only vague and
cruelly female. She was by no means sure of liking
Aunt Maud as much as she deserved, and Aunt
Maud's command of funds was obviously inferior to
Milly's. There was thus clearly, as pleading for the
latter, some influence that would later on become
distinct; and meanwhile, decidedly, it was enough
that she was as charming as she was queer and as
queer as she was charming — all of which was a rare
amusement; as well, for that matter, as further suffi
cient that there were objects of value she had already
pressed on Kate's acceptance. A week of her society

BOOK FOURTH

in these conditions — conditions that Milly chose
to sum up as ministering immensely, for a blind
vague pilgrim, to aid and comfort — announced itself
from an early hour as likely to become a week of
presents, acknowledgements, mementoes, pledges of
gratitude and admiration, that were all on one side.
Kate as promptly embraced the propriety of making
it clear that she must forswear shops till she should
receive some guarantee that the contents of each one
she entered as a humble companion should n't be
placed at her feet; yet that was in truth not before
she had found herself in possession, under whatever
protests, of several precious ornaments and other
minor conveniences.

Great was the absurdity too that there should have
come a day, by the end of the week, when it appeared
that all Milly would have asked in definite "return,"
as might be said, was to be told a little about Lord
Mark and to be promised the privilege of a visit to
Mrs. Condrip. Far other amusements had been
offered her, but her eagerness was shamelessly human,
and she seemed really to count more on the revelation
of the anxious lady at Chelsea than on the best nights
of the opera. Kate admired, and showed it, such an
absence of fear : to the fear of being bored in such a
connexion she would have been so obviously entitled.
Milly's answer to this was the plea of her curiosities
— which left her friend wondering as to their odd
direction. Some among them, no doubt, were rather
more intelligible, and Kate had heard without wonder
that she was blank about Lord Mark. This young
lady's account of him, at the same time, professed

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THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

itself frankly imperfect; for what they best knew him
by at Lancaster Gate was a thing difficult to explain.
One knew people in general by something they had
to show, something that, either for them or against,
could be touched or named or proved ; and she could
think of no other case of a value taken as so great and
yet flourishing untested. His value was his future,
which had somehow got itself as accepted by Aunt
Maud as if it had been his good cook or his steam-
launch. She, Kate, did n't mean she thought him a
humbug; he might do great things — but they were
as yet, so to speak, all he had done. On the other
hand it was of course something of an achievement,
and not open to every one, to have got one's self taken
so seriously by Aunt Maud. The best thing about
him doubtless, on the whole, was that Aunt Maud
believed in him. She was often fantastic, but she
knew a humbug, and — no, Lord Mark was n't that.
He had been a short time in the House, on the Tory
side, but had lost his seat on the first opportunity,
and this was all he had to point to. However, he
pointed to nothing; which was very possibly just a
sign of his real cleverness, one of those that the really
clever had in common with the really void. Even
Aunt Maud frequently admitted that there was a
good deal, for her view of him, to bring up the rear.
And he was n't meanwhile himself indifferent — in
different to himself — for he was working Lancaster
Gate for all it was worth : just as it was, no doubt,
working him, and just as the working and the worked
were in London, as one might explain, the parties to
every relation.

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Kate did explain, for her listening friend; every
one who had anything to give — it was true they were
the fewest — made the sharpest possible bargain for
it, got at least its value in return. The strangest thing
furthermore was that this might be in cases a happy
understanding. The worker in one connexion was
the worked in another ; it was as broad as it was long
— with the wheels of the system, as might be seen,
wonderfully oiled. People could quite like each other
in the midst of it, as Aunt Maud, by every appear
ance, quite liked Lord Mark, and as Lord Mark, it
was to be hoped, liked Mrs. Lowder, since if he
did n't he was a greater brute than one could believe.
She, Kate, had n't yet, it was true, made out what he
was doing for her — besides which the dear woman
needed him, even at the most he could do, much less
than she imagined; so far as all of which went, more
over, there were plenty of things on every side she had
n't yet made out. She believed, on the whole, in any
one Aunt Maud took up; and she gave it to Milly as
worth thinking of that, whatever wonderful people
this young lady might meet in the land, she would
meet no more extraordinary woman. There were
greater celebrities by the million, and of course
greater swells, but a bigger person, by Kate's view,
and a larger natural handful every way, would really
be far to seek. When Milly enquired with interest if
Kate's belief in her was primarily on the lines of what
Mrs. Lowder "took up," her interlocutress could
handsomely say yes, since by the same principle she
believed in herself. Whom but Aunt Maud's niece,
pre-eminently, had Aunt Maud taken up, and who

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THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

was thus more in the current, with her, of working
and of being worked ? "You may ask," Kate said,
"what in the world / have to give; and that indeed is
just what I 'm trying to learn. There must be some
thing, for her to think she can get it out of me. She
will get it — trust her; and then I shall see what it is;
which I beg you to believe I should never have found
out for myself." She declined to treat any question
of Milly's own "paying" power as discussable; that
Milly would pay a hundred per cent — and even to
the end, doubtless, through the nose — was just the
beautiful basis on which they found themselves.

These were fine facilities, pleasantries, ironies, all
these luxuries of gossip and philosophies of London
and of life, and they became quickly, between the pair,
the common form of talk, Milly professing herself de
lighted to know that something was to be done with
her. 'If the most remarkable woman in England was
to do it, so much the better, and if the most remark
able woman in England had them both in hand to
gether why what could be jollier for each ? When
she reflected indeed a little on the oddity of her want
ing two at once Kate had the natural reply that it
was exactly what showed her sincerity. She invari
ably gave way to feeling, and feeling had distinctly
popped up in her on the advent of her girlhood's friend.
The way the cat would jump was always, in presence
of anything that moved her, interesting to see ; visibly
enough, moreover, it had n't for a long time jumped
anything like so far. This in fact, as we already know,
remained the marvel for Milly Theale, who, on sight
of Mrs. Lowder, had found fifty links in respect to

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Susie absent from the chain of association. She knew
so herself what she thought of Susie that she would
have expected the lady of Lancaster Gate to think
something quite different; the failure of which end
lessly mystified her. But her mystification was the
cause for her of another fine impression, inasmuch as
when she went so far as to observe to Kate that Susan
Shepherd — and especially Susan Shepherd emerg
ing so uninvited from an irrelevant past — ought by
all the proprieties simply to have bored Aunt Maud,
her confidant agreed to this without a protest and
abounded in the sense of her wonder. Susan Shep
herd at least bored the niece — that was plain ; this
young woman saw nothing in her — nothing to ac
count for anything, not even for Milly's own indulg
ence : which little fact became in turn to the latter's
mind a fact of significance. It was a light on the hand
some girl — representing more than merely showed
— that poor Susie was simply as nought to her. This
was in a manner too a general admonition to poor
Susie's companion, who seemed to see marked by it
the direction in which she had best most look out.
It just faintly rankled in her that a person who was
good enough and to spare for Milly Theale should n't
be good enough for another girl; though, oddly
enough, she could easily have forgiven Mrs. Lowder
herself the impatience. Mrs. Lowder did n't feel it,
and Kate Croy felt it with ease ; yet in the end, be
it added, she grasped the reason, and the reason
enriched her mind. Was n't it sufficiently the reason
that the handsome girl was, with twenty other splen
did qualities, the least bit brutal too, and did n't she

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suggest, as no one yet had ever done for her new
friend, that there might be a wild beauty in that, and
even a strange grace ? Kate was n't brutally brutal
— which Milly had hitherto benightedly supposed
the only way; she was n't even aggressively so, but
rather indifferently, defensively and, as might be
said, by the habit of anticipation. She simplified in
advance, was beforehand with her doubts, and knew
with singular quickness what she was n't, as they
said in New York, going to like. In that way at least
people were clearly quicker in England than at home;
and Milly could quite see after a little how such
instincts might become usual in a world in which
dangers abounded. There were clearly more dangers
roundabout Lancaster Gate than one suspected in
New York or could dream of in Boston. At all events,
with more sense of them, there were more precautions,
and it was a remarkable world altogether in which
there could be precautions, on whatever ground,
against Susie.

Ill

SHE certainly made up with Susie directly, however,
for any allowance she might have had privately to
extend to tepid appreciation; since the late and long
talks of these two embraced not only everything
offered and suggested by the hours they spent apart,
but a good deal more besides. She might be as de
tached as the occasion required at four o'clock in the
afternoon, but she used no such freedom to any one
about anything as she habitually used about every
thing to Susan Shepherd at midnight. All the same,
it should with much less delay than this have been
mentioned, she had n't yet — had n't, that is, at the
end of six days — produced any news for her comrade
to compare with an announcement made her by the
latter as a result of a drive with Mrs. Lowder, for a
change, in the remarkable Battersea Park. The
elder friends had sociably revolved there while the
younger ones followed bolder fancies in the admir
able equipage appointed to Milly at the hotel — a
heavier, more emblazoned, more amusing chariot
than she had ever, with "stables" notoriously mis
managed, known at home; whereby, in the course
of the circuit, more than once repeated, it had "come
out," as Mrs. Stringham said, that the couple at Lan
caster Gate were, of all people, acquainted with Mil
dred's other English friend, the gentleman, the one
connected with the English newspaper (Susie hung

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THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

fire a little over his name) who had been with her in
New York so shortly previous to present adventures.
He had been named of course in Battersea Park —
else he could n't have been identified; and Susie had
naturally, before she could produce her own share in
the matter as a kind of confession, to make it plain
that her allusion was to Mr. Merton Densher. This
was because Milly had at first a little air of not know
ing whom she meant ; and the girl really kept, as well,
a certain control of herself while she remarked that
the case was surprising, the chance one in a thousand.
They knew him, both Maud and Miss Croy knew
him, she gathered too, rather well, though indeed it
was n't on any show of intimacy that he had hap
pened to be mentioned. It had n't been — Susie
made the point — she herself who brought him in ;
he had in fact not been brought in at all, but only re
ferred to as a young journalist known to Mrs. Lowder
and who had lately gone to their wonderful country
— Mrs. Lowder always said "your wonderful coun
try " — on behalf of his journal. But Mrs. Stringham
had taken it up — with the tips of her fingers indeed ;
and that was the confession : she had, without mean
ing any harm, recognised Mr. Densher as an acquaint
ance of Milly's, though she had also pulled herself up
before getting in too far. Mrs. Lowder had been
struck, clearly — it wasn't too much to say; then
she also, it had rather seemed, had pulled herself up ;
and there had been a little moment during which
each might have been keeping something from the
other. "Only,' said Milly's informant, "I luckily
remembered in time that I had nothing whatever to

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keep — which was much simpler and nicer. I don't
know what Maud has, but there it is. She was inter
ested, distinctly, in your knowing him — in his hav
ing met you over there with so little loss of time.
But I ventured to tell her it had n't been so long as
to make you as yet great friends. I don't know if I
was right."

Whatever time this explanation might have taken,
there had been moments enough in the matter now —
before the elder woman's conscience had done itself
justice — to enable Milly to reply that although the
fact in question doubtless had its importance she
imagined they would n't find the importance over
whelming. It was odd that their one Englishman
should so instantly fit; it was n't, however, miracul
ous — they surely all had often seen how extraordin
arily "small," as every one said, was the world.
Undoubtedly also Susie had done just the plain thing
in not letting his name pass. Why in the world should
there be a mystery ? — and what an immense one
they would appear to have made if he should come
back and find they had concealed their knowledge of
him ! " I don't know, Susie dear," the girl observed,
"what you think I have to conceal."

"It doesn't matter, at a given moment," Mrs.
Stringham returned, "what you know or don't know
as to what I think; for you always find out the very
next minute, and when you do find out, dearest, you
never really care. Only," she presently asked, " have
you heard of him from Miss Croy ? "

"Heard of Mr. Densher? Never a word. We
have n't mentioned him. Why should we ?"

THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

"That you haven't I understand; but that your
friend hasn't," Susie opined, "may mean some
thing."

"May mean what ?"

"Well," Mrs. Stringham presently brought out,
"I tell you all when I tell you that Maud asks me to
suggest to you that it may perhaps be better for the
present not to speak of him : not to speak of him to
her niece, that is, unless she herself speaks to you
first. But Maud thinks she won't."

Milly was ready to engage for anything; but in
respect to the facts — as they so far possessed them

— it all sounded a little complicated. "Is it because
there 's anything between them ? "

"No —r I gather not; but Maud's state of mind is
precautionary. She's afraid of something. Or per
haps it would be more correct to say she's afraid of
everything."

"She's afraid, you mean," Milly asked, "of their

— a — liking each other ? "

Susie had an intense thought and then an effusion.
"My dear child, we move in a labyrinth."

"Of course we do. That 's just the fun of it ! " said
Milly with a strange gaiety. Then she added : " Don't
tell me that — in this for instance — there are not
abysses. I want abysses."

Her friend looked at her — it was not unfrequently
the case — a little harder than the surface of the occa
sion seemed to require; and another person present
at such times might have wondered to what inner
thought of her own the good lady was trying to fit
the speech. It was too much her disposition, no doubt,

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to treat her young companion's words as symptoms
of an imputed malady. It was none the less, how
ever, her highest law to be light when the girl was
light. She knew how to be quaint with the new quaint-
ness — the great Boston gift ; it had been happily
her note in the magazines; and Maud Lowder, to
whom it was new indeed and who had never heard
anything remotely like it, quite cherished her, as a
social resource, by reason of it. It should n't there
fore fail her now; with it in fact one might face most
things. "Ah then let us hope we shall sound the
depths — I 'm prepared for the worst — of sorrow
and sin ! But she would like her niece — we 're not
ignorant of that, are we ? — to marry Lord Mark.
Has n't she told you so ? "

"Has n't Mrs. Lowder told me ?"

"No; has n't Kate ? It is n't, you know, that she
does n't know it."

Milly had, under her comrade's eyes, a minute of
mute detachment. She had lived with Kate Croy
for several days in a state of intimacy as deep as it
had been sudden, and they had clearly, in talk, in
many directions, proceeded to various extremities.
Yet it now came over her as in a clear cold wave that
there was a possible account of their relations in which
the quantity her new friend had told her might have
figured as small, as smallest, beside the quantity she
had n't. She could n't say at any rate whether or
no Kate had made the point that her aunt designed
her for Lord Mark : it had only sufficiently come out
— which had been, moreover, eminently guessable —
that she was involved in her aunt's designs. Some-

THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

how, for Milly, brush it over nervously as she might
and with whatever simplifying hand, this abrupt ex
trusion of Mr. Densher altered all proportions, had
an effect on all values. It was fantastic of her to let it
make a difference that she could n't in the least have
defined — and she was at least, even during these
instants, rather proud of being able to hide, on the
spot, the difference it did make. Yet all the same
the effect for her was, almost violently, of that gentle
man's having been there — having been where she
had stood till now in her simplicity — before her. It
would have taken but another free moment to make
her see abysses — since abysses were what she wanted
— in the mere circumstance of his own silence, in New
York, about his English friends. There had really
been in New York little time for anything; but, had
she liked, Milly could have made it out for herself
that he had avoided the subject of Miss Croy and that
Miss Croy was yet a subject it could never be natural
to avoid. It was to be added at the same time that
even if his silence had been a labyrinth — which was
absurd in view of all the other things too he could n't
possibly have spoken of — this was exactly what
must suit her, since it fell under the head of the plea
she had just uttered to Susie. These things, however,
came and went, and it set itself up between the com
panions, for the occasion, in the oddest way, both that
their happening all to know Mr. Densher — except
indeed that Susie did n't, but probably would — was
a fact attached, in a world of rushing about, to one
of the common orders of chance; and yet further that
it was amusing — oh awfully amusing ! — to be able

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fondly to hope that there was "something in" its
having been left to crop up with such suddenness.
There seemed somehow a possibility that the ground
or, as it were, the air might in a manner have under
gone some pleasing preparation ; though the question
of this possibility would probably, after all, have
taken some threshing out. The truth, moreover —
and there they were, already, our pair, talking about
it, the "truth" ! — had n't in fact quite cropped out.
This, obviously, in view of Mrs. Lowder's request to
her old friend.

It was accordingly on Mrs. Lowder's recommenda
tion that nothing should be said to Kate — it was on
all this might cover in Aunt Maud that the idea of an
interesting complication could best hope to perch;
and when in fact, after the colloquy we have reported,
Milly saw Kate again without mentioning any name,
her silence succeeded in passing muster with her as the
beginning of a new sort of fun. The sort was all the
newer by its containing measurably a small element
of anxiety : when she had gone in for fun before it had
been with her hands a little more free. Yet it was,
none the less, rather exciting to be conscious of a still
sharper reason for interest in the handsome girl, as
Kate continued even now pre-eminently to remain
for her; and a reason — this was the great point — of
which the young woman herself could have no sus
picion. Twice over thus, for two or three hours to
gether, Milly found herself seeing Kate, quite fixing
her, in the light of the knowledge that it was a face on
which Mr. Densher's eyes had more or less familiarly
rested and which, by the same token, had looked,

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THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

rather more beautifully than less, into his own. She
pulled herself up indeed with the thought that it had
inevitably looked, as beautifully as one would, into
thousands of faces in which one might one's self never
trace it; but just the odd result of the thought was to
intensify for the girl that side of her friend which she
had doubtless already been more prepared than she
quite knew to think of as the "other," the not wholly
calculable. It was fantastic, and Milly was aware of
this; but the other side was what had, of a sudden,
been turned straight toward her by the show of Mr.
Densher's propinquity. She had n't the excuse of
knowing it for Kate's own, since nothing whatever as
yet proved it particularly to be such. Never mind;
it was with this other side now fully presented that
Kate came and went, kissed her for greeting and for
parting, talked, as usual, of everything but — as it
had so abruptly become for Milly — the thing. Our
young woman, it is true, would doubtless not have
tasted so sharply a difference in this pair of occa
sions had n't she been tasting so peculiarly her own
possible betrayals. What happened was that after
wards, on separation, she wondered if the matter
had n't mainly been that she herself was so "other,"
so taken up with the unspoken ; the strangest thing of
all being, still subsequently, that when she asked her
self how Kate could have failed to feel it she became
conscious of being here on the edge of a great dark
ness. She should never know how Kate truly felt
about anything such a one as Milly Theale should
give her to feel. Kate would never — and not from
ill will nor from duplicity, but from a sort of failure

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of common terms — reduce it to such a one's com
prehension or put it within her convenience.

It was as such a one, therefore, that, for three or
four days more, Milly watched Kate as just such
another; and it was presently as such a one that she
threw herself into their promised visit, at last achieved,
to Chelsea, the quarter of the famous Carlyle, the
field of exercise of his ghost, his votaries, and the
residence of " poor Marian," so often referred to and
actually a somewhat incongruous spirit there. With
our young woman's first view of poor Marian every
thing gave way but the sense of how in England,
apparently, the social situation of sisters could be
opposed, how common ground for a place in the world
could quite fail them : a state of things sagely per
ceived to be involved in an hierarchical, an aristo
cratic order. Just whereabouts in the order Mrs.
Lowder had established her niece was a question not
wholly void as yet, no doubt, of ambiguity — though
Milly was withal sure Lord Mark could exactly have
fixed the point if he would, fixing it at the same time
for Aunt Maud herself; but it was clear Mrs. Con-
drip was, as might have been said, in quite another
geography. She would n't have been to be found on
the same social map, and it was as if her visitors had
turned over page after page together before the final
relief of their benevolent " Here ! " The interval was
bridged of course, but the bridge verily was needed,
and the impression left Milly to wonder if, in the gen
eral connexion, it were of bridges or of intervals that
the spirit not locally disciplined would find itself most
conscious. It was as if at home, by contrast, there

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were neither — neither the difference itself, from
position to position, nor, on either side, and particu
larly on one, the awfully good manner, the conscious
sinking of a consciousness, that made up for it. The
conscious sinking, at all events, and the awfully good
manner, the difference, the bridge, the interval, the
skipped leaves of the social atlas — these, it was to be
confessed, had a little, for our young lady, in default
of stouter stuff, to work themselves into the light
literary legend — a mixed wandering echo of Trol-
lope, of Thackeray, perhaps mostly of Dickens —
under favour of which her pilgrimage had so much
appealed. She could relate to Susie later on, late the
same evening, that the legend, before she had done
with it, had run clear, that the adored author of "The
Newcomes," in fine, had been on the whole the note :
the picture lacking thus more than she had hoped, or
rather perhaps showing less than she had feared, a
certain possibility of Pickwickian outline. She ex
plained how she meant by this that Mrs. Condrip
had n't altogether proved another Mrs. Nickleby,
nor even — for she might have proved almost any
thing, from the way poor worried Kate had spoken —
a widowed and aggravated Mrs. Micawber.

Mrs. Stringham, in the midnight conference, in
timated rather yearningly that, however the event
might have turned, the side of English life such ex
periences opened to Milly were just those she herself
seemed " booked " — as they were all, roundabout
her now, always saying — to miss : she had begun to
have a little, for her fellow observer, these moments
of fanciful reaction (reaction in which she was once

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more all Susan Shepherd) against the high sphere
of colder conventions into which her overwhelming
connexion with Maud Manningham had rapt her.
Milly never lost sight for long of the Susan Shepherd
side of her, and was always there to meet it when it
came up and vaguely, tenderly, impatiently to pat it,
abounding in the assurance that they would still pro
vide for it. They had, however, to-night another
matter in hand; which proved to be presently, on the
girl's part, in respect to her hour of Chelsea, the revel
ation that Mrs. Condrip, taking a few minutes when
Kate was away with one of the children, in bed up
stairs for some small complaint, had suddenly (with
out its being in the least "led up to") broken ground
on the subject of Mr. Densher, mentioned him with
impatience as a person in love with her sister. " She
wished me, if I cared for Kate, to know," Milly said

— "for it would be quite too dreadful, and one might
do something."

Susie wondered. " Prevent anything coming of it ?
That's easily said. Do what ?"

Milly had a dim smile. "I think that what she
would like is that I should come a good deal to see
her about it."

"And doesn't she suppose you've anything else
to do?"

The girl had by this time clearly made it out.
"Nothing but to admire and make much of her sister

— whom she does n't, however, herself in the least
understand — and give up one's time, and everything
else, to it." It struck the elder friend that she spoke
with an almost unprecedented approach to sharpness;

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as if Mrs. Condrip had been rather indescribably
disconcerting. Never yet so much as just of late had
Mrs. Stringham seen her companion exalted, and by
the very play of something within, into a vague golden
air that left irritation below. That was the great thing
with Milly — it was her characteristic poetry, or at
least it was Susan Shepherd's. "But she made a
point," the former continued, "of my keeping what
she says from Kate. I 'm not to mention that she has
spoken."

"And why," Mrs. Stringham presently asked, "is
Mr. Densher so dreadful ? "

Milly had, she thought, a delay to answer — some
thing that suggested a fuller talk with Mrs. Condrip
than she inclined perhaps to report. " It is n't so
much he himself." Then the girl spoke a little as for
the romance of it; one could never tell, with her, where
romance would come in. " It 's the state of his for
tunes."

"And is that very bad ?"

"He has no 'private means,' and no prospect of
any. He has no income, and no ability, according
to Mrs. Condrip, to make one. He's as poor, she
calls it, as 'poverty,' and she says she knows what
that is."

Again Mrs. Stringham considered, and it presently
produced something. " But is n't he brilliantly
clever?"

Milly had also then an instant that was not quite
fruitless. " I have n't the least idea."

To which, for the time, Susie only replied "Oh!"
— though by the end of a minute she had followed it

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with a slightly musing " I see " ; and that in turn with :
"It's quite what Maud Lowder thinks."

"That he'll never do anything?"

"No — quite the contrary: that he's exceptionally
able."

"Oh yes; I know" — Milly had again, in refer
ence to what her friend had already told her of this,
her little tone of a moment before. " But Mrs. Con-
drip's own great point is that Aunt Maud herself
won't hear of any such person. Mr. Densher, she
holds — that 's the way, at any rate, it was explained
to me — won't ever be either a public man or a rich
man. If he were public she'd be willing, as I under
stand, to help him ; if he were rich — without being
anything else — she'd do her best to swallow him.
As it is she taboos him."

"In short," said Mrs. Stringham as with a private
purpose, "she told you, the sister, all about it. But
Mrs. Lowder likes him," she added.

"Mrs. Condrip did n't tell me that."

"Well, she does, all the same, my dear, extremely."

"Then there it is!" On which, with a drop and
one of those sudden slightly sighing surrenders to a
vague reflux and a general fatigue that had recently
more than once marked themselves for her compan
ion, Milly turned away. Yet the matter was n't left
so, that night, between them, albeit neither perhaps
could afterwards have said which had first come back
to it. Milly 's own nearest approach at least, for a
little, to doing so, was to remark that they appeared
all — every one they saw — to think tremendously
of money. This prompted in Susie a laugh, not un-

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tender, the innocent meaning of which was that it
came, as a subject for indifference, money did, easier
to some people than to others : she made the point in
fairness, however, that you could n't have told, by
any too crude transparency of air, what place it held
for Maud Manningham. She did her worldliness
with grand proper silences — if it might n't better be
put perhaps that she did her detachment with grand
occasional pushes. However Susie put it, in truth,
she was really, in justice to herself, thinking of the
difference, as favourites of fortune, between her old
friend and her new. Aunt Maud sat somehow in the
midst of her money, founded on it and surrounded by
it, even if with a masterful high manner about it, her
manner of looking, hard and bright, as if it were n't
there. Milly, about hers, had no manner at all —
which was possibly, from a point of view, a fault : she
was at any rate far away on the edge of it, and you
had n't, as might be said, in order to get at her nature,
to traverse, by whatever avenue, any piece of her
property. It was clear, on the other hand, that Mrs.
Lowder was keeping her wealth as for purposes, im
aginations, ambitions, that would figure as large, as
honourably unselfish, on the day they should take
effect. She would impose her will, but her will would
be only that a person or two should n't lose a benefit
by not submitting if they could be made to submit.
To Milly, as so much younger, such far views could n't
be imputed: there was nobody she was supposable
as interested for. It was too soon, since she was n't
interested for herself. Even the richest woman, at
her age, lacked motive, and Milly's motive doubtless

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had plenty of time to arrive. She was meanwhile
beautiful, simple, sublime without it — whether miss
ing it and vaguely reaching out for it or not ; and with
it, for that matter, in the event, would really be these
things just as much. Only then she might very well
have, like Aunt Maud, a manner. Such were the
connexions, at all events, in which the colloquy of our
two ladies freshly flickered up — in which it came
round that the elder asked the younger if she had
herself, in the afternoon, named Mr. Densher as an
acquaintance.

"Oh no — I said nothing of having seen him. I
remembered," the girl explained, "Mrs. Lowder's
wish."

"But that," her friend observed after a moment,
"was for silence to Kate."

"Yes — but Mrs. Condrip would immediately have
told Kate."

"Why so? — since she must dislike to talk about
him."

"Mrs. Condrip must?" Milly thought. "What
she would like most is that her sister should be
brought to think ill of him ; and if anything she can
tell her will help that — " But the girl dropped sud
denly here, as if her companion would see.

Her companion's interest, however, was all for
what she herself saw. "You mean she'll immedi
ately speak?" Mrs. Stringham gathered that this
was what Milly meant, but it left still a question.
"How will it be against him that you know him ?"

"Oh how can I say? It won't be so much one's
knowing him as one's having kept it out of sight."

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"Ah," said Mrs. Stringham as for comfort, "you
have n't kept it out of sight. Is n't it much rather
Miss Croy herself who has ? "

" It is n't my acquaintance with him," Milly smiled,
"that she has dissimulated."

" She has dissimulated only her own ? Well then
the responsibility's hers."

"Ah but," said the girl, not perhaps with marked
consequence, "she has a right to do as she likes."

"Then so, my dear, have you!" smiled Susan
Shepherd.

Milly looked at her as if she were almost venerably
simple, but also as if this were what one loved her for.
"We're not quarrelling about it, Kate and I, yet."

"I only meant," Mrs. Stringham explained, "that
I don't see what Mrs. Condrip would gain."

" By her being able to tell Kate ? " Milly thought.
" I only meant that I don't see what I myself should
gain."

" But it will have to come out — that he knows you
both — some time."

Milly scarce assented. "Do you mean when he
comes back ? "

"He'll find you both here, and he can hardly be
looked to, I take it, to 'cut* either of you for the sake
of the other."

This placed the question at last on a basis more
distinctly cheerful. "I might get at him somehow
beforehand," the girl suggested; "I might give him
what they call here the 'tip' — that he's not to know
me when we meet. Or, better still, I might n't be
here at all."

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" Do you want to run away from him ? "

It was, oddly enough, an idea Milly seemed half
to accept. "I don't know what I want to run away
from!"

It dispelled, on the spot — something, to the elder
woman's ear, in the sad, sweet sound of it — any
ghost of any need of explaining. The sense was con
stant for her that their relation might have been afloat,
like some island of the south, in a great warm sea that
represented, for every conceivable chance, a margin,
an outer sphere, of general emotion; and the effect
of the occurrence of anything in particular was to
make the sea submerge the island, the margin flood
the text. The great wave now for a moment swept
over. " I '11 go anywhere else in the world you like."

But Milly came up through it. " Dear old Susie —
how I do work you ! "

"Oh this is nothing yet."

"No indeed — to what it will be."

"You 're not — and it 's vain to pretend," said dear
old Susie, who had been taking her in, "as sound and
strong as I insist on having you."

"Insist, insist — the more the better. But the day
I look as sound and strong as that, you know," Milly
went on — "on that day I shall be just sound and
strong enough to take leave of you sweetly for ever.
That's where one is," she continued thus agreeably
to embroider, "when even one's most 'beaux mo
ments ' are n't such as to qualify, so far as appearance
goes, for anything gayer than a handsome cemetery.
Since I 've lived all these years as if I were dead, I
shall die, no doubt, as if I were alive — which will

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happen to be as you want me. So, you see," she
wound up, "you'll never really know where I am.
Except indeed when I 'm gone ; and then you '11 only
know where I 'm not."

" I 'd die for you," said Susan Shepherd after a
moment.

"Thanks awfully'! Then stay here for me."

"But we can't be in London for August, nor for
many of all these next weeks."

"Then we '11 go back."

Susie blenched. " Back to America ? "

"No, abroad — to Switzerland, Italy, anywhere.
I mean by your staying 'here' for me," Milly pur
sued, "your staying with me wherever I may be,
even though we may neither of us know at the time
where it is. No," she insisted, "I dont know where
I am, and you never will, and it does n't matter — and
I dare say it's quite true," she broke off, "that every
thing will have to come out." Her friend would have
felt of her that she joked about it now, had n't her
scale from grave to gay been a thing of such un-
nameable shades that her contrasts were never sharp.
She made up for failures of gravity by failures of
mirth ; if she had n't, that is, been at times as earnest
as might have been liked, so she was certain not to be
at other times as easy as she would like herself. " I
must face the music. It is n't at any rate its 'coming
out/" she added; "it's that Mrs. Condrip would
put the fact before her to his injury."

Her companion wondered. "But how to bis?"

"Why if he pretends to love her — !"

"And does he only 'pretend' ?"
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" I mean if, trusted by her in strange countries, he
forgets her so far as to make up to other people."

The amendment, however, brought Susie in, as
with gaiety, for a comfortable end. "Did he make
up, the false creature, to you?"

"No — but the question is n't of that. It 's of what
Kate might be made to believe."

"That, given the fact of his having evidently more
or less followed up his acquaintance with you, to say
nothing of your obvious weird charm, he must have
been all ready if you had a little bit led him on ? "

Milly neither accepted nor qualified this; she only
said after a moment and as with a conscious excess of
the pensive: "No, I don't think she'd quite wish to
suggest that I made up to him; for that I should have
had to do so would only bring out his constancy. All
I mean is," she added — and now at last, as with a
supreme impatience — "that her being able to make
him out a little a person who could give cause for
jealousy would evidently help her, since she 's afraid
of him, to do him in her sister's mind a useful ill
turn."

Susan Shepherd perceived in this explanation such
signs of an appetite for motive as would have sat
gracefully even on one of her own New England
heroines. It was seeing round several corners; but
that was what New England heroines did, and it was
moreover interesting for the moment to make out
how many her young friend had actually undertaken
to see round. Finally, too, were n't they braving the
deeps ? They got their amusement where they could.
"Isn't it only," she asked, "rather probable she'd

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see that Kate's knowing him as (what 's the pretty old
word ?) volage — ? "

"Well?" She hadn't filled out her idea, but
neither, it seemed, could Milly.

"Well, might but do what that often does — by
all our blessed little laws and arrangements at
least: excite Kate's own sentiment instead of de
pressing it."

The idea was bright, yet the girl but beautifully
stared. "Kate's own sentiment? Oh she didn't
speak of that. I don't think," she added as if she
had been unconsciously giving a wrong impression,
"I don't think Mrs. Condrip imagines she's in
love.'*

It made Mrs. Stringham stare in turn. "Then
what's her fear?"

"Well, only the fact of Mr. Densher's possibly
himself keeping it up — the fear of some final result
from that"

"Oh," said Susie, intellectually a little discon
certed — "she looks far ahead ! "

At this, however, Milly threw off another of her
sudden vague "sports." "No — it's only we who
do."

"Well, don't let us be more interested for them
than they are for themselves ! "

"Certainly not" — the girl promptly assented. A
certain interest nevertheless remained; she appeared
to wish to be clear. " It was n't of anything on Kate's
own part she spoke."

"You mean she thinks her sister distinctly does n't
care for him ? "

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It was still as if, for an instant, Milly had to be
sure of what she meant; but there it presently was.
"If she did care Mrs. Condrip would have told me."

What Susan Shepherd seemed hereupon for a little
to wonder was why then they had been talking so.
"But did you ask her?"

"Ah no!"

"Oh! "said Susan Shepherd.

Milly, however, easily explained that she would n't
have asked her for the world.

BOOK FIFTH

I

LORD MARK looked at her to-day in particular as if
to wring from her a confession that she had originally
done him injustice; and he was entitled to whatever
there might be in it of advantage or merit that his in
tention really in a manner took effect : he cared about
something, after all, sufficiently to make her feel ab
surdly as if she were confessing — all the while it was
quite the case that neither justice nor injustice was
what had been in question between them. He had
presented himself at the hotel, had found her and had
found Susan Shepherd at home, had been " civil " to
Susan — it was just that shade, and Susan's fancy
had fondly caught it; and then had come again and
missed them, and then had come and found them
once more : besides letting them easily see that if it
had n't by this time been the end of everything —
which they could feel in the exhausted air, that of the
season at its last gasp — the places they might have
liked to go to were such as they would have had only
to mention. Their feeling was — or at any rate their
modest general plea — that there was no place they
would have liked to go to ; there was only the sense of
finding they liked, wherever they were, the place to
which they had been brought. Such was highly the
case as to their current consciousness — which could
be indeed, in an equally eminent degree, but a matter
of course; impressions this afternoon having by a

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THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

happy turn of their wheel been gathered for them into
a splendid cluster, an offering like an armful of the
rarest flowers. They were in presence of the offering
— they had been led up to it ; and if it had been still
their habit to look at each other across distances for
increase of unanimity his hand would have been si
lently named between them as the hand applied to the
wheel. He had administered the touch that, under
light analysis, made the difference — the difference of
their not having lost, as Susie on the spot and at the
hour phrased it again and again, both for herself and
for such others as the question might concern, so
beautiful and interesting an experience ; the difference
also, in fact, of Mrs. Lowder's not having lost it either,
though it was superficially with Mrs. Lowder they
had come, and though it was further with that lady
that our young woman was directly engaged during
the half-hour or so of her most agreeably inward re
sponse to the scene.

The great historic house had, for Milly, beyond
terrace and garden, as the centre of an almost ex
travagantly grand Watteau-com position, a tone as of
old gold kept "down " by the quality of the air, sum
mer full-flushed but attuned to the general perfect
taste. Much, by her measure, for the previous hour,
appeared, in connexion with this revelation of it, to
have happened to her — a quantity expressed in in
troductions of charming new people, in walks through
halls of armour, of pictures, of cabinets, of tapestry,
of tea-tables, in an assault of reminders that this
largeness of style was the sign of appointed felicity.
The largeness of style was the great containing vessel,

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while everything else, the pleasant personal affluence,
the easy murmurous welcome, the honoured age of
illustrious host and hostess, all at once so distin
guished and so plain, so public and so shy, became
but this or that element of the infusion. The elements
melted together and seasoned the draught, the es
sence of which might have struck the girl as distilled
into the small cup of iced coffee she had vaguely ac
cepted from somebody, while a fuller flood somehow
kept bearing her up — all the freshness of response of
her young life, the freshness of the first and only
prime. What had perhaps brought on just now a
kind of climax was the fact of her appearing to make
out, through Aunt Maud, what was really the matter.
It could n't be less than a climax for a poor shaky
maiden to find it put to her of a sudden that she her
self was the matter — for that was positively what,
on Mrs. Lowder's part, it came to. Everything was
great, of course, in great pictures, and it was doubt
less precisely a part of the brilliant life — since the
brilliant life, as one had faintly figured it, just was
humanly led — that all impressions within its area
partook of its brilliancy; still, letting that pass, it
fairly stamped an hour as with the official seal for one
to be able to take in so comfortably one's companion's
broad blandness. "You must stay among us — you
must stay; anything else is impossible and ridiculous;
you don't know yet, no doubt — you can't; but you
will soon enough : you can stay in any position." It
had been as the murmurous consecration to follow
the murmurous welcome; and even if it were but part
of Aunt Maud's own spiritual ebriety — for the dear

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THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

woman, one could see, was spiritually "keeping" the
day — it served to Milly, then and afterwards, as a
high-water mark of the imagination.

It was to be the end of the short parenthesis which
had begun but the other day at Lancaster Gate with
Lord Mark's informing her that she was a "success"
— the key thus again struck ; and though no distinct,
no numbered revelations had crowded in, there had,
as we have seen, been plenty of incident for the space
and the time. There had been thrice as much, and all
gratuitous and genial — if, in portions, not exactly
hitherto the revelation — as three unprepared weeks
could have been expected to produce. Mrs. Lowder
had improvised a "rush" for them, but out of ele
ments, as Milly was now a little more freely aware,
somewhat roughly combined. Therefore if at this
very instant she had her reasons for thinking of the
parenthesis as about to close — reasons completely
personal — she had on behalf of her companion a
divination almost as deep. The parenthesis would
close with this admirable picture, but the admirable
picture still would show Aunt Maud as not absolutely
sure either if she herself were destined to remain in it.
What she was doing, Milly might even not have es
caped seeming to see, was to talk herself into a sub-
limer serenity while she ostensibly talked Milly. It
was fine, the girl fully felt, the way she did talk her,
little as, at bottom, our young woman needed it or
found other persuasions at fault. It was in particular
during the minutes of her grateful absorption of iced
coffee — qualified by a sharp doubt of her wisdom —
that she most had in view Lord Mark's relation to her

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being there, or at least to the question of her being
amused at it. It would n't have taken much by the
end of five minutes quite to make her feel that this
relation was charming. It might, once more, simply
have been that everything, anything, was charming
when one was so justly and completely charmed; but,
frankly, she had n't supposed anything so serenely
sociable could settle itself between them as the
friendly understanding that was at present somehow
in the air. They were, many of them together, near
the marquee that had been erected on a stretch of
sward as a temple of refreshment and that happened
to have the property — which was all to the good —
of making Milly think of a "durbar"; her iced coffee
had been a consequence of this connexion, through
which, further, the bright company scattered about
fell thoroughly into place. Certain of its members
might have represented the contingent of "native
princes " — familiar, but scarce the less grandly gre
garious term ! — and Lord Mark would have done
for one of these even though for choice he but pre
sented himself as a supervisory friend of the family.
The Lancaster Gate family, he clearly intended, in
which he included its American recruits, and in
cluded above all Kate Croy — a young person
blessedly easy to take care of. She knew people, and
people knew her, and she was the handsomest thing
there — this last a declaration made by Milly, in a
>rt of soft midsummer madness, a straight skylark-
light of charity, to Aunt Maud.

Kate had for her new friend's eyes the extraor
dinary and attaching property of appearing at a given

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THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

moment to show as a beautiful stranger, to cut her
connexions and lose her identity, letting the imagina
tion for the time make what it would of them — make
her merely a person striking from afar, more and
more pleasing as one watched, but who was above all
a subject for curiosity. Nothing could have given her,
as a party to a relation, a greater freshness than this
sense, which sprang up at its own hours, of one's being
as curious about her as if one had n't known her. It
had sprung up, we have gathered, as soon as Milly
had seen her after hearing from Mrs. Stringham of
her knowledge of Merton Densher; she had looked
then other and, as Milly knew the real critical mind
would call it, more objective; and our young woman
had foreseen it of her on the spot that she would often
look so again. It was exactly what she was doing this
afternoon; and Milly, who had amusements of
thought that were like the secrecies of a little girl
playing with dolls when conventionally "too big,"
could almost settle to the game of what one would
suppose her, how one would place her, if one did n't
know her. She became thus, intermittently, a figure
conditioned only by the great facts of aspect, a figure
to be waited for, named and fitted. This was doubt
less but a way of feeling that it was of her essence to
be peculiarly what the occasion, whatever it might be,
demanded when its demand was highest. There were
probably ways enough, on these lines, for such a con
sciousness; another of them would be for instance
to say that she was made for great social uses. Milly
was n't wholly sure she herself knew what great
social uses might be — unless, as a good example,

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to exert just that sort of glamour in just that sort of
frame were one of them : she would have fallen back
on knowing sufficiently that they existed at all events
for her friend. It imputed a primness, all round, to be
reduced but to saying, by way of a translation of one's
amusement, that she was always so right — since
that, too often, was what the insup portables them
selves were; yet it was, in overflow to Aunt Maud,
what she had to content herself withal — save for the
lame enhancement of saying she was lovely. It served,
despite everything, the purpose, strengthened the
bond that for the time held the two ladies together,
distilled in short its drop of rose-colour for Mrs. Low-
der's own view. That was really the view Milly had,
for most of the rest of the occasion, to give herself to
immediately taking in ; but it did n't prevent the con
tinued play of those swift cross-lights, odd beguile-
ments of the mind, at which we have already glanced.
Mrs. Lowder herself found it enough simply to
reply, in respect to Kate, that she was indeed a luxury
to take about the world : she expressed no more sur
prise than that at her " Tightness" to-day. Did n't it
by this time sufficiently shine out that it was precisely
as the very luxury she was proving that she had, from
far back, been appraised and waited for ? Crude
elation, however, might be kept at bay, and the cir
cumstance none the less made clear that they were
all swimming together in the blue. It came back to
Lord Mark again, as he seemed slowly to pass and
repass and conveniently to linger before them; he
was personally the note of the blue — like a suspended
skein of silk within reach of the broiderer's hand.

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THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

Aunt Maud's free-moving shuttle took a length of
him at rhythmic intervals ; and one of the accessory
truths that flickered across to Milly was that he ever
so consentingly knew he was being worked in. This
was almost like an understanding with her at Mrs.
Lowder's expense, which she would have none of;
she would n't for the world have had him make any
such point as that he would n't have launched them
at Matcham — or whatever it was he had done —
only for Aunt Maud's beaux ycux. What he had done,
it would have been guessable, was something he had
for some time been desired in vain to do; and what
they were all now profiting by was a change com
paratively sudden, the cessation of hope delayed.
What had caused the cessation easily showed itself as
none of Milly's business ; and she was luckily, for that
matter, in no real danger of hearing from him directly
that her individual weight had been felt in the scale.
Why then indeed was it an effect of his diffused but
subdued participation that he might absolutely have
been saying to her "Yes, let the dear woman take
her own tone " ? " Since she 's here she may stay," he
might have been adding — "for whatever she can
make of it. But you and I are different." Milly knew
she was different in truth — his own difference was
his own affair; but also she knew that after all, even
at their distinctest, Lord Mark's "tips" in this line
would be tacit. He practically placed her — it came
round again to that — under no obligation whatever.
It was a matter of equal ease, moreover, her letting
Mrs. Lowder take a tone. She might have taken
twenty — they would have spoiled nothing.

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"You must stay on with us; you can, you know,
in any position you like; any, any, any, my dear
child" — and her emphasis went deep. "You must
make your home with us ; and it 's really open to you
to make the most beautiful one in the world. You
must n't be under a mistake — under any of any sort;
and you must let us all think for you a little, take care
of you and watch over you. Above all you must help
me with Kate, and you must stay a little for her ; no
thing for a long time has happened to me so good as
that you and she should have become friends. It 's
beautiful; it's great; it's everything. What makes it
perfect is that it should have come about through our
dear delightful Susie, restored to me, after so many
years, by such a miracle. No — that 's more charm
ing to me than even your hitting it off with Kate. God
has been good to one — positively; for I could n't, at
my age, have made a new friend — undertaken, I
mean, out of whole cloth, the real thing. It's like
changing one's bankers — after fifty : one does n't do
that. That's why Susie has been kept for me, as you
seem to keep people in your wonderful country, in
lavender and pink paper — coming back at last as
straight as out of a fairy-tale and with you as an at
tendant fairy." Milly hereupon replied appreciat
ively that such a description of herself made her feel
as if pink paper were her dress and lavender its trim
ming; but Aunt Maud was n't to be deterred by a
weak joke from keeping it up. The young person
under her protection could feel besides that she kept
it up in perfect sincerity. She was somehow at this
hour a very happy woman, and a part of her happi-

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THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

ness might precisely have been that her affections and
her views were moving as never before in concert.
Unquestionably she loved Susie; but she also loved
Kate and loved Lord Mark, loved their funny old
host and hostess, loved every one within range, down
to the very servant who came to receive Milly's empty
ice-plate — down, for that matter, to Milly herself,
who was, while she talked, really conscious of the en
veloping flap of a protective mantle, a shelter with the
weight of an Eastern carpet. An Eastern carpet, for
wishing-purposes of one's own, was a thing to be on
rather than under; still, however, if the girl should
fail of breath it would n't be, she could feel, by Mrs.
Lowder's fault. One of the last things she was after
wards to recall of this was Aunt Maud's going on to
say that she and Kate must stand together because
together they could do anything. It was for Kate of
course she was essentially planning; but the plan, en
larged and uplifted now, somehow required Milly's
prosperity too for its full operation, just as Milly's
prosperity at the same time involved Kate's. It was
nebulous yet, it was slightly confused, but it was com
prehensive and genial, and it made our young woman
understand things Kate had said of her aunt's pos
sibilities, as well as characterisations that had fallen
from Susan Shepherd. One of the most frequent on
the lips of the latter had been that dear Maud was a
, grand natural force.

II

A PRIME reason, we must add, why sundry impres
sions were not to be fully present to the girl till later
on was that they yielded at this stage, with an effect
of sharp supersession, to a detached quarter of an
hour — her only one — with Lord Mark. " Have you
seen the picture in the house, the beautiful one that 's
so like you ? " — he was asking that as he stood be
fore her; having come up at last with his smooth
intimation that any wire he had pulled and yet wanted
not to remind her of was n't quite a reason for his
having no joy at all.

"I've been through rooms and I've seen pictures.
But if I 'm ' like ' anything so beautiful as most of
them seemed to me — ! " It needed in short for Milly
some evidence which he only wanted to supply. She
was the image of the wonderful Bronzino, which she
must have a look at on every ground. He had thus
called her off and led her away; the more easily that
the house within was above all what had already
drawn round her its mystic circle. Their progress
meanwhile was not of the straightest; it was an ad
vance, without haste, through innumerable natural
pauses and soft concussions, determined for the most
part by the appearance before them of ladies and
gentlemen, singly, in couples, in clusters, who brought
them to a stand with an inveterate "I say, Mark."
What they said she never quite made out; it was their

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THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

all so domestically knowing him, and his knowing
them, that mainly struck her, while her impression,
for the rest, was but of fellow strollers more vaguely
afloat than themselves, supernumeraries mostly a
little battered, whether as jaunty males or as ostens
ibly elegant women. They might have been moving
a good deal by a momentum that had begun far back,
but they were still brave and personable, still war
ranted for continuance as long again, and they gave
her, in especial collectively, a sense of pleasant voices,
pleasanter than those of actors, of friendly empty
words and kind lingering eyes that took somehow
pardonable liberties. The lingering eyes looked her
over, the lingering eyes were what went, in almost
confessed simplicity, with the pointless "I say,
Mark " ; and what was really most flagrant of all was
that, as a pleasant matter of course, if she did n't
mind, he seemed to suggest their letting people, poor
dear things, have the benefit of her.

The odd part was that he made her herself believe,
for amusement, in the benefit, measured by him in
mere manner — for wonderful, of a truth, was, as a
means of expression, his slightness of emphasis —
that her present good nature conferred. It was, as
she could easily see, a mild common carnival of good
nature — a mass of London people together, of sorts
and; sorts, but who mainly knew each other and who,
in their way, did, no doubt, confess to curiosity. It
had gone round that she was there; questions about
her would be passing; the easiest thing was to run the
gauntlet with him — just as the easiest thing was in
fact to trust him generally. Could n't she know for

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herself, passively, how little harm they meant her ? —
to that extent that it made no difference whether or
not he introduced them. The strangest thing of all
for Milly was perhaps the uplifted assurance and in
difference with which she could simply give back the
particular bland stare that appeared in such cases to
mark civilisation at its highest. It was so little her
fault, this oddity of what had "gone round" about
her, that to accept it without question might be as
good a way as another of feeling life. It was inevitable
to supply the probable description — that of the
awfully rich yourtg American who was so queer to be
hold, but nice, by all accounts, to know; and she had
really but one instant of speculation as to fables or
fantasies perchance originally launched. She asked
herself once only if Susie could, inconceivably, have
been blatant about her; for the question, on the spot,
was really blown away for ever. She knew in fact on
the spot and with sharpness just why she had
"elected" Susan Shepherd: she had had from the
first hour the conviction of her being precisely the
person in the world least possibly a trumpeter. So it
was n't their fault, it was n't their fault, and anything
might happen that would, and everything now again
melted together, and kind eyes were always kind eyes
— if it were never to be worse than that ! She got with
her companion into the house; they brushed, bene
ficently, past all their accidents. The Bronzino was,
it appeared, deep within, and the long afternoon
light lingered for them on patches of old colour and
waylaid them, as they went, in nooks and opening
vistas.

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THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

It was all the while for Milly as if Lord Mark had
really had something other than this spoken pretext
in view; as if there were something he wanted to say
to her and were only — consciously yet not awkwardly,
just delicately — hanging fire. At the same time it
was as if the thing had practically been said by the
moment they came in sight of the picture; since
what it appeared to amount to was "Do let a fellow
who is n't a fool take care of you a little." The thing
somehow, with the aid of the Bronzino, was done; it
had n't seemed to matter to her before if he were a
fool or no; but now, just where they were, she liked
his not being; and it was all moreover none the worse
for coming back to something of the same sound as
Mrs. Lowder's so recent reminder. She too wished
to take care of her — and was n't it, a pen pres, what
all the people with the kind eyes were wishing ? Once
more things melted together — the beauty and the
history and the facility and the splendid midsummer
glow : it was a sort of magnificent maximum, the pink
dawn of an apotheosis coming so curiously soon.
What in fact befell was that, as she afterwards made
out, it was Lord Mark who said nothing in particular
— it was she herself who said all. She could n't help
that — it came ; and the reason it came was that she
found herself, for the first moment, looking at the
mysterious portrait through tears. Perhaps it was her
tears that made it just then so strange and fair — as
wonderful as he had said : the face of a young woman,
all splendidly drawn, down to the hands, and splen
didly dressed; a face almost livid in hue, yet hand
some in sadness and crowned with a mass of hair,

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BOOK FIFTH

rolled back and high, that must, before fading with
time, have had a family resemblance to her own. The
lady in question, at all events, with her slightly
Michael-angelesque squareness, her eyes of other
days, her full lips, her long neck, her recorded jewels,
her brocaded and wasted reds, was a very great per
sonage — only unaccompanied by a joy. And she
was dead, dead, dead. Milly recognised her exactly
in words that had nothing to do with her. "I shall
never be better than this."

He smiled for her at the portrait. "Than she?
You 'd scarce need to be better, for surely that 's well
enough. But you are, one feels, as it happens, better;
because, splendid as she is, one doubts if she was
good."

He had n't understood. She was before the picture,
but she had turned to him, and she did n't care if for
the minute he noticed her tears. It was probably as
good a moment as she should ever have with him.
It was perhaps as good a moment as she should have
with any one, or have in any connexion whatever. " I
mean that everything this afternoon has been too
beautiful, and that perhaps everything together will
never be so right again. I'm very glad therefore
you 've been a part of it."

Though he still did n't understand her he was as
nice as if he had ; he did n't ask for insistence, and
that was just a part of his looking after her. He
simply protected her now from herself, and there was
a world of practice in it. "Oh we must talk about
these things ! "

O

Ah they had already done that, she knew, as much
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THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

as she ever would ; and she was shaking her head at
her pale sister the next moment with a world, on her
side, of slowness. "I wish I could see the resem
blance. Of course her complexion's green," she
laughed; "but mine's several shades greener."

"It's down to the very hands," said Lord Mark.

"Her hands are large," Milly went on, "but mine
are larger. Mine are huge."

"Oh you go her, all round, 'one better' — which
is just what I said. But you're a pair. You must
surely catch it," he added as if it were important to
his character as a serious man not to appear to have
invented his plea.

" I don't know — one never knows one's self. It 's
a funny fancy, and I don't imagine it would have
occurred — "

"I see it has occurred" — he had already taken
her up. She had her back, as she faced the picture, to
one of the doors of the room, which was open, and
on her turning as he spoke she saw that they were
in the presence of three other persons, also, as ap
peared, interested enquirers. Kate Croy was one of
these; Lord Mark had just become aware of her, and
she, all arrested, had immediately seen, and made
the best of it, that she was far from being first in the
field. She had brought a lady and a gentleman to
whom she wished to show what Lord Mark was show
ing Milly, and he took her straightway as a re-enforce
ment. Kate herself had spoken, however, before he
had had time to tell her so.

" You had noticed too ? " — she smiled at him with
out looking at Milly. "Then I'm not original —

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BOOK FIFTH

which one always hopes one has been. But the like
ness is so great." And now she looked at Milly —
for whom again it was, all round indeed, kind, kind
eyes. " Yes, there you are, my dear, if you want to
know. And you're superb." She took now but a
glance at the picture, though it was enough to make
her question to her friends not too straight. " Is n't
she superb ? "

"I brought Miss Theale," Lord Mark explained
to the latter, "quite off my own bat."

"I wanted Lady Aldershaw," Kate continued to
Milly, "to see for herself."

"Les grands esprits se rencontrent!" laughed her
attendant gentleman, a high but slightly stooping,
shambling and wavering person who represented
urbanity by the liberal aid of certain prominent front
teeth and whom Milly vaguely took for some sort of
great man.

Lady Aldershaw meanwhile looked at Milly quite
as if Milly had been the Bronzino and the Bronzino
only Milly. "Superb, superb. Of course I had
noticed you. It is wonderful," she went on with her
back to the picture, but with some other eagerness
which Milly felt gathering, felt directing her motions
now. It was enough — they were introduced, and
she was saying "I wonder if you could give us the
pleasure of coming — " She wasn't fresh, for she
was n't young, even though she denied at every pore
that she was old; but she was vivid and much be
jewelled for the midsummer daylight; and she was all
in the palest pinks and blues. She did n't think, at
this pass, that she could "come" anywhere — Milly

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THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

didn't; and she already knew that somehow Lord
Mark was saving her from the question. He had in
terposed, taking the words out of the lady's mouth
and not caring at all if the lady minded. That was
clearly the right way to treat her — at least for him ;
as she had only dropped, smiling, and then turned
away with him. She had been dealt with — it would
have done an enemy good. The gentleman still stood,
a little helpless, addressing himself to the intention of
urbanity as if it were a large loud whistle; he had been
sighing sympathy, in his way, while the lady made
her overture; and Milly had in this light soon arrived
at their identity. They were Lord and Lady Alder-
shaw, and the wife was the clever one. A minute or
two later the situation had changed, and she knew it
afterwards to have been by the subtle operation of
Kate. She was herself saying that she was afraid she
must go now if Susie could be found; but she was
sitting down on the nearest seat to say it. The pro
spect, through opened doors, stretched before her into
other rooms, down the vista of which Lord Mark was
strolling with Lady Aldershaw, who, close to him
and much intent, seemed to show from behind as
peculiarly expert. Lord Aldershaw, for his part, had
been left in the middle of the room, while Kate, with
her back to him, was standing before her with much
sweetness of manner. The sweetness was all for her ;
she had the sense of the poor gentleman's having
somehow been handled as Lord Mark had handled
his wife. He dangled there, he shambled a little; then
he bethought himself of the Bronzino, before which,
with his eye-glass, he hovered. It drew from him an

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BOOK FIFTH

odd vague sound, not wholly distinct from a grunt,
and a " Humph — most remarkable ! " which lighted
Kate's face with amusement. The next moment he
had creaked away over polished floors after the oth
ers and Milly was feeling as if she had been rude.
But Lord Aldershaw was in every way a detail and
Kate was saying to her that she hoped she was n't
ill.

Thus it was that, aloft there in the great gilded
historic chamber and the presence of the pale person
age on the wall, whose eyes all the while seemed en
gaged with her own, she found herself suddenly sunk
in something quite intimate and humble and to which
these grandeurs were strange enough witnesses. It
had come up, in the form in which she had had to
accept it, all suddenly, and nothing about it, at the
same time, was more marked than that she had in a
manner plunged into it to escape from something
else. Something else, from her first vision of her
friend's appearance three minutes before, had been
present to her even through the call made by the
others on her attention; something that was per
versely there, she was more and more uncomfortably
finding, at least for the first moments and by some
spring of its own, with every renewal of their meeting.
" Is it the way she looks to him? " she asked herself —
the perversity being how she kept in remembrance
that Kate was known to him. It was n't a fault in
Kate — nor in him assuredly ; and she had a horror,
being generous and tender, of treating either of them
as if it had been. To Densher himself she could n't
make it up — he was too far away; but her secondary

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THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

impulse was to make it up to Kate. She did so now
with a strange soft energy — the impulse immediately
acting. "Will you render me to-morrow a great serv
ice ? "

"Any service, dear child, in the world."

" But it 's a secret one — nobody must know. I
must be wicked and false about it."

"Then I 'm your woman," Kate smiled, "for that 's
the kind of thing I love. Do let us do something bad.
You're impossibly without sin, you know."

Milly's eyes, on this, remained a little with their
companion's. "Ah I shan't perhaps come up to your
idea. It's only to deceive Susan Shepherd."

"Oh!" said Kate as if this were indeed mild.

" But thoroughly — as thoroughly as I can."

"And for cheating," Kate asked, "my powers will
contribute ? Well, I '11 do my best for you." In ac
cordance with which it was presently settled between
them that Milly should have the aid and comfort of
her presence for a visit to Sir Luke Strett. Kate had
needed a minute for enlightenment, and it was quite
grand for her comrade that this name should have
said nothing to her. To Milly herself it had for some
days been secretly saying much. The personage in
question was, as she explained, the greatest of medical
lights — if she had got hold, as she believed (and she
had used to this end the wisdom of the serpent) of the
right, the special man. She had written to him three
days before, and he had named her an hour, eleven-
twenty; only it had come to her on the eve that
she could n't go alone. Her maid on the other hand
was n't good enough, and Susie was too good. Kate

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BOOK FIFTH

had listened above all with high indulgence. "And
I 'm betwixt and between, happy thought ! Too good
for what ? "

Milly thought. "Why to be worried if it's nothing.
And to be still more worried — I mean before she
need be — if it is n't."

Kate fixed her with deep eyes. "What in the world
is the matter with you ?" It had inevitably a sound
of impatience, as if it had been a challenge really to
produce something; so that Milly felt her for the
moment only as a much older person, standing above
her a little, doubting the imagined ailments, suspect
ing the easy complaints, of ignorant youth. It some
what checked her, further, that the matter with her
was what exactly as yet she wanted knowledge about;
and she immediately declared, for conciliation, that
if she were merely fanciful Kate would see her put to
shame. Kate vividly uttered, in return, the hope that,
since she could come out and be so charming, could
so universally dazzle and interest, she was n't all the
while in distress or in anxiety — did n't believe her
self to be in any degree seriously menaced. "Well, I
want to make out — to make out!" was all that this
consistently produced. To which Kate made clear
answer: "Ah then let us by all means!"

"I thought," Milly said, "you'd like to help me.
But I must ask you, please, for the promise of ab
solute silence."

"And how, if you are ill, can your friends remain
in ignorance ? "

"Well, if I am it must of course finally come out.
But I can go for a long time." Milly spoke with her

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THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

r

eyes again on her painted sister's — almost as if under
their suggestion. She still sat there before Kate, yet
not without a light in her face. "That will be one of
my advantages. I think I could die without its being
noticed."

"You're an extraordinary young woman," her
friend, visibly held by her, declared at last. "What
a remarkable time to talk of such things ! "

"Well, we won't talk, precisely" - Milly got her
self together again. "I only wanted to make sure of
you."

"Here in the midst of — !" But Kate could only
sigh for wonder — almost visibly too for pity.

It made a moment during which her companion
waited on her word ; partly as if from a yearning, shy
but deep, to have her case put to her just as Kate was
struck by it; partly as if the hint of pity were already
giving a sense to her whimsical "shot," with Lord
Mark, at Mrs. Lowder's first dinner. Exactly this —
the handsome girl's compassionate manner, her
friendly descent from her own strength — was what
she had then foretold. She took Kate up as if posi
tively for the deeper taste of it. " Here in the midst of
what?"

" Of everything. There 's nothing you can't have.
There 's nothing you can't do."

"So Mrs. Lowder tells me."

It just kept Kate's eyes fixed as possibly for more
of that; then, however, without waiting, she went on.
"We all adore you."

"You're wonderful — you dear things!" Milly
laughed.

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BOOK FIFTH

"No, it's you" And Kate seemed struck with the
real interest of it. "In three weeks !"

Milly kept it up. "Never were people on such
terms! All the more reason," she added, "that I
should n't needlessly torment you."

"But me? what becomes of me?" said Kate.

" Well, you " - Milly thought — " if there 's any
thing to bear you '11 bear it."

<k But I wont bear it ! " said Kate Croy .

"Oh yes you will: all the same! You'll pity me
awfully, but you '11 help me very much. And I abso
lutely trust you. So there we are." There they were
then, since Kate had so to take it; but there, Milly
felt, she herself in particular was; for it was just the
point at which she had wished to arrive. She had
wanted to prove to herself that she did n't horribly
blame her friend for any reserve; and what better
proof could there be than this quite special confid
ence ? If she desired to show Kate that she really
believed Kate liked her, how could she show it more
than by asking her help ?

Ill

WHAT it really came to, on the morrow, this first time
— the time Kate went with her — was that the great
man had, a little, to excuse himself; had, by a rare
accident — for he kept his consulting-hours in gen
eral rigorously free — but ten minutes to give her ;
ten mere minutes which he yet placed at her service
in a manner that she admired still more than she
could meet it: so crystal-clean the great empty cup
of attention that he set between them on the table.
He was presently to jump into his carriage, but he
promptly made the point that he must see her again,
see her within a day or two; and he named for her at
once another hour — easing her off beautifully too
even then in respect to her possibly failing of justice
to her errand. The minutes affected her in fact as ebb
ing more swiftly than her little army of items could
muster, and they would probably have gone without
her doing much more than secure another hearing,
had n't it been for her sense, at the last, that she had
gained above all an impression. The impression —
all the sharp growth of the final few moments — was
neither more nor less than that she might make, of a
sudden, in quite another world, another straight
friend, and a friend who would moreover be, wonder
fully, the most appointed, the most thoroughly ad
justed of the whole collection, inasmuch as he would
somehow wear the character scientifically, ponder-

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ably, proveably — not just loosely and sociably.
Literally, furthermore, it would n't really depend on
herself, Sir Luke Strett's friendship, in the least : per
haps what made her most stammer and pant was its
thus queerly coming over her that she might find she
had interested him even beyond her intention, find
she was in fact launched in some current that would
lose itself in the sea of science. At the same time that
she struggled, however, she also surrendered; there
was a moment at which she almost dropped the form
of stating, of explaining, and threw herself, without
violence, only with a supreme pointless quaver that
had turned the next instant to an intensity of inter
rogative stillness, upon his general good will. His large
settled face, though firm, was not, as she had thought
at first, hard ; he looked, in the oddest manner, to her
fancy, half like a general and half like a bishop, and
she was soon sure that, within some such handsome
range, what it would show her would be what was
good, what was best for her. She had established, in
other words, in this time-saving way, a relation with
it; and the relation was the special trophy that, for the
hour, she bore off. It was like an absolute possession,
a new resource altogether, something done up in the
softest silk and tucked away under the arm of memory.
She had n't had it when she went in, and she had it
when she came out; she had it there under her cloak,
but dissimulated, invisibly carried, when smiling,
smiling, she again faced Kate Croy. That young lady
had of course awaited her in another room, where, as
the great man was to absent himself, no one else was
in attendance; and she rose for her with such a face

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of sympathy as might have graced the vestibule of a
dentist. "Is it out ?" she seemed to ask as if it had
been a question of a tooth ; and Milly indeed kept her
in no suspense at all.

"He's a dear. I'm to come again."

" But what does he say ? "

Milly was almost gay. "That I'm not to worry
about anything in the world, and that if I '11 be a good
girl and do exactly what he tells me he '11 take care of
me for ever and ever."

Kate wondered as if things scarce fitted. "But
does he allow then that you 're ill ? "

"I don't know what he allows, and I don't care.
I shall know, and whatever it is it will be enough.
He knows all about me, and I like it. I don't hate it
a bit."

Still, however, Kate stared. "But could he, in so
few mimites, ask you enough — ? "

"He asked me scarcely anything — he doesn't
need to do anything so stupid," Milly said. "He can
tell. He knows," she repeated; "and when I go back
— for he '11 have thought me over a little — it will be
all right."

Kate after a moment made the best of this. "Then
when are we to come ? "

It just pulled her friend up, for even while they
talked — at least it was one of the reasons — she stood
there suddenly, irrelevantly, in the light of her other
identity, the identity she would have for Mr. Densher.
This was always, from one instant to another, an in
calculable light, which, though it might go off faster
than it came on, necessarily disturbed. It sprang,

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with a perversity all its own, from the fact that, with
the lapse of hours and days, the chances themselves
that made for his being named continued so oddly to
fail. There were twenty, there were fifty, but none of
them turned up. This in particular was of course not
a juncture at which the least of them would naturally
be present; but it would make, none the less, Milly
saw, another day practically all stamped with avoid
ance. She saw in a quick glimmer, and with it all
Kate's unconsciousness; and then she shook off the
obsession. But it had lasted long enough to qualify
her response. No, she had shown Kate how she
trusted her; and that, for loyalty, would somehow do.
"Oh, dear thing, now that the ice is broken I shan't
trouble you again."

"You '11 come alone?"

"Without a scruple. Only I shall ask you, please,
for your absolute discretion still."

Outside, at a distance from the door, on the wide
pavement of the great contiguous square, they had to
wait again while their carriage, which Milly had kept,
completed a further turn of exercise, engaged in by
the coachman for reasons of his own. The footman
was there and had indicated that he was making the
circuit; so Kate went on while they stood. " But don't
you ask a good deal, darling, in proportion to what
you give ? "

This pulled Milly up still shorter — so short in fact
that she yielded as soon as she had taken it in. But
she continued to smile. "I see. Then you can tell."

"I don't want to 'tell,'" said Kate. "I'll be as
silent as the tomb if I can only have the truth from

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you. All I want is that you should n't keep from me
how you find out that you really are."

"Well then I won't ever. But you see for your
self," Milly went on, "how I really am. I 'm satisfied.
I'm happy."

Kate looked at her long. "I believe you like it.
The way things turn out for you — ! "

Milly met her look now without a thought of any
thing but the spoken. She had ceased to be Mr.
Densher's image; she stood for nothing but herself,
and she was none the less fine. Still, still, what had
passed was a fair bargain and it would do. "Of
course I like it. I feel — I can't otherwise describe
it — as if I had been on my knees to the priest. I 've
confessed and I 've been absolved. It has been lifted
off."

Kate's eyes never quitted her. " He must have liked
you."

"Oh — doctors!" Milly said. "But I hope," she
added, "he didn't like me too much." Then as if
to escape a little from her friend's deeper sounding, or
as impatient for the carnage, not yet in sight, her
eyes, turning away, took in the great stale square.
As its staleness, however, was but that of London
fairly fatigued, the late hot London with its dance
all danced and its story all told, the air seemed a thing
of blurred pictures and mixed 'echoes, and an impres
sion met the sense — an impression that broke the
next moment through the girl's tightened lips. "Oh
it 's a beautiful big world, and every one, yes, every
one — !" It presently brought her back to Kate, and
she hoped she did n't actually look as much as if she

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were crying as she must have looked to Lord Mark
among the portraits at Matcham.

Kate at all events understood. "Everyone wants
to be so nice?"

"So nice," said the grateful Milly.

"Oh," Kate laughed, "we'll pull you through!
And won't you now bring Mrs. Stringham ?"

But Milly after an instant was again clear about
that. "Not till I've seen him once more."

She was to have found this preference, two days
later, abundantly justified; and yet when, in prompt
accordance with what had passed between them, she
reappeared before her distinguished friend — that
character having for him in the interval built itself
up still higher — the first thing he asked her was
whether she had been accompanied. She told him,
on this, straightway, everything; completely free at
present from her first embarrassment, disposed even
— as she felt she might become — to undue volubility,
and conscious moreover of no alarm from his thus
perhaps wishing she had not come alone. It was
exactly as if, in the forty-eight hours that had passed,
her acquaintance with him had somehow increased
and his own knowledge in particular received mys
terious additions. They had been together, before,
scarce ten minutes; but the relation, the one the ten
minutes had so beautifully created, was there to take
straight up : and this not, on his own part, from mere
professional heartiness, mere bedside manner, which
she would have disliked — much rather from a quiet
pleasant air in him of having positively asked about
her, asked here and asked there and found out. Of

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course he could n't in the least have asked, or have
wanted to; there was no source of information to his
hand, and he had really needed none : he had found
out simply by his genius — and found out, she meant,
literally everything. Now she knew not only that she
did n't dislike this — the state of being found out
about; but that on the contrary it was truly what
she had come for, and that for the time at least it
would give her something firm to stand on. She
struck herself as aware, aware as she had never been,
of really not having had from the beginning anything
firm. It would be strange for the firmness to come,
after all, from her learning in these agreeable condi
tions that she was in some way doomed ; but above all
it would prove how little she had hitherto had to hold
her up. If she was now to be held up by the mere pro
cess — since that was perhaps on the cards — of be
ing let down, this would only testify in turn to her queer
little history. That sense of loosely rattling had been
no process at all ; and it was ridiculously true that her
thus sitting there to see her life put into the scales
represented her first approach to the taste of orderly
living. Such was Milly's romantic version — that her
life, especially by the fact of this second interview,
was put into the scales; and just the best part of the
relation established might have been, for that matter,
that the great grave charming man knew, had known
at once, that it was romantic, and in that measure
allowed for it. Her only doubt, her only fear, was
whether he perhaps would n't even take advantage of
her being a little romantic to treat her as romantic
altogether. This doubtless was her danger with him;

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but she should see, and dangers in general meanwhile
dropped and dropped.

The very place, at the end of a few minutes, the
commodious " handsome " room, far back in the fine
old house, soundless from position, somewhat sallow
with years of celebrity, somewhat sombre even at
midsummer — the very place put on for her a look of
custom and use, squared itself solidly round her as
with promises and certainties. She had come forth
to see the world, and this then was to be the world's
light, the rich dusk of a London "back," these the
world's walls, those the world's curtains and carpet.
She should be intimate with the great bronze clock
and mantel-ornaments, conspicuously presented in
gratitude and long ago ; she should be as one of the
circle of eminent contemporaries, photographed,
engraved, signatured, and in particular framed and
glazed, who made up the rest of the decoration, and
made up as well so much of the human comfort; and
while she thought of all the clean truths, unfringed,
unfingered, that the listening stillness, strained into
pauses and waits, would again and again, for years,
have kept distinct, she also wondered what she would
eventually decide upon to present in gratitude. She
would give something better at least than the brawny
Victorian bronzes. This was precisely an instance of
what she felt he knew of her before he had done with
her : that she was secretly romancing at that rate, in
the midst of so much else that was more urgent, all
over the place. So much for her secrets with him,
none of which really required to be phrased. It would
have been thoroughly a secret for her from any one

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else that without a dear lady she had picked up just
before coming over she would n't have a decently
near connexion of any sort, for such an appeal as she
was making, to put forward : no one in the least, as it
were, to produce for respectability. But bis seeing it
she did n't mind a scrap, and not a scrap either his
knowing how she had left the dear lady in the dark.
She had come alone, putting her friend off with a
fraud : giving a pretext of shops, of a whim, of she
did n't know what — the amusement of being for
once in the streets by herself. The streets by herself
were new to her — she had always had in them a
companion or a maid; and he was never to believe
moreover that she could n't take full in the face any
thing he might have to say. He was softly amused at
her account of her courage ; though he yet showed it
somehow without soothing her too grossly. Still, he
did want to know whom she had. Had n't there been
a lady with her on Wednesday ?

" Yes — a different one. Not the one who 's travel
ling with me. I 've told her."

Distinctly he was amused, and it added to his air —
the greatest charm of all — of giving her lots of time.
"You've told her what?"

"Well," said Milly, "that I visit you in secret."

"And how many persons will she tell ?"

"Oh she's devoted. Not one."

"Well, if she's devoted does n't that make another
friend for you ? "

It did n't take much computation, but she never
theless had to think a moment, conscious as she was
that he distinctly would want to fill out his notion of

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her — even a little, as it were, to warm the air for her.
That however — and better early than late — he
must accept as of no use ; and she herself felt for an
instant quite a competent certainty on the subject of
any such warming. The air, for Milly Theale, was,
from the very nature of the case, destined never to
rid itself of a considerable chill. This she could tell
him with authority, if she could tell him nothing else;
and she seemed to see now, in short, that it would
importantly simplify. "Yes, it makes another; but
they all together would n't make — well, I don't
know what to call it but the difference. I mean when
one is — really alone. I've never seen anything like
the kindness." She pulled up a minute while he
waited — waited again as if with his reasons for
letting her, for almost making her, talk. What she
herself wanted was not, for the third time, to cry, as
it were, in public. She bad never seen anything like
the kindness, and she wished to do it justice; but she
knew what she was about, and justice was not
wronged by her being able presently to stick to her
point. "Only one's situation is what it is. It's me it
concerns. The rest is delightful and useless. Nobody
can really help. That's why I 'm by myself to-day. I
want to be — in spite of Miss Croy, who came with
me last. If you can help, so much the better — and
also of course if one can a little one's self. Except
for that — you and me doing our best — I like you to
see me just as I am. Yes, I like it — and I don't exag
gerate. Should n't one, at the start, show the worst —
so that anything after that may be better ? It
would n't make any real difference — it won't make

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THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

any, anything that may happen won't — to any one.
Therefore I feel myself, this way, with you, just as I
am ; and — if you do in the least care to know — it
quite positively bears me up."

She put it as to his caring to know, because his
manner seemed to give her all her chance, and the
impression was there for her to take. It was strange
and deep for her, this impression, and she did ac
cordingly take it straight home. It showed him —
showed him in spite of himself — as allowing, some
where far within, things comparatively remote, things
in fact quite, as she would have said, outside, deli
cately to weigh with him; showed him as interested
on her behalf in other questions beside the question of
what was the matter with her. She accepted such an
interest as regular in the highest type of scientific
mind — his own being the highest, magnificently —
because otherwise obviously it would n't be there;
but she could at the same time take it as a direct
source of light upon herself, even though that might
present her a little as pretending to equal him. Want
ing to know more about a patient than how a patient
was constructed or deranged could n't be, even on
the part of the greatest of doctors, anything but some
form or other of the desire to let the patient down
easily. When that was the case the reason, in turn,
could only be, too manifestly, pity; and when pity
held up its telltale face like a head on a pike, in a
French revolution, bobbing before a window, what
was the inference but that the patient was bad ? He
might say what he would now — she would always
have seen the head at the window; and in fact from

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this moment she only wanted him to say what he
would. He might say it too with the greater ease to
himself as there was n't one of her divinations that —
as her own — he would in any way put himself out for.
Finally, if he was making her talk she was talking,
and what it could at any rate come to for him was
that she was n't afraid. If he wanted to do the dearest
thing in the world for her he would show her he be
lieved she was n't ; which undertaking of hers — not
to have misled him — was what she counted at the
moment as her presumptuous little hint to him that
she was as good as himself. It put forward the bold
idea that he could really be misled ; and there actually
passed between them for some seconds a sign, a sign
of the eyes only, that they knew together where they
were. This made, in their brown old temple of truth,
its momentary flicker; then what followed it was that
he had her, all the same, in his pocket; and the whole
thing wound up for that consummation with his
kind dim smile. Such kindness was wonderful with
such dimness ; but brightness — that even of sharp
steel — was of course for the other side of the busi
ness, and it would all come in for her to one tune or
another. " Do you mean," he asked, "that you 've no
relations at all ? — not a parent, not a sister, not even
a cousin nor an aunt ? "

She shook her head as with the easy habit of an in
terviewed heroine or a freak of nature at a show.
"Nobody whatever" — but the last thing she had
come for was to be dreary about it. " I 'm a survivor
— a survivor of a general wreck. You see," she
added, "how that's to be taken into account — that

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THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

every one else has gone. When I was ten years old
there were, with my father and my mother, six of us.
I 'm all that 's left. But they died," she went on, to be
fair all round, "of different things. Still, there it is.
And, as I told you before, I 'm American. Not that I
mean that makes me worse. However, you '11 prob
ably know what it makes me."

"Yes" — he even showed amusement for it. "I
know perfectly what it makes you. It makes you, to
begin with, a capital case."

She sighed, though gratefully, as if again before
the social scene. "Ah there you are!"

"Oh no; there 'we* are n't at all! There I am only

— but as much as you like. I 've no end of American
friends : there they are, if you please, and it 's a fact
that you could n't very well be in a better place than
in their company. It puts you with plenty of others

— and that is n't pure solitude." Then he pursued :
"I'm sure you've an excellent spirit; but don't try
to bear more things than you need." Which after an
instant he further explained. "Hard things have
come to you in youth, but you must n't think life will
be for you all hard things. You've the right to be
happy. You must make up your mind to it. You
must accept any form in which happiness may come."

"Oh I'll accept any whatever!" she almost gaily
returned. "And it seems to me, for that matter, that
I 'm accepting a new one every day. Now this ! " she
smiled.

"This is very well so far as it goes. You can depend
on me," the great man said, "for unlimited interest.
But I 'm only, after all, one element in fifty. We must

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gather in plenty of others. Don't mind who knows.
Knows, I mean, that you and I are friends."

"Ah you do want to see some one ! " she broke out.
"You want to get at some one who cares for me."
With which, however, as he simply met this sponta
neity in a manner to show that he had often had it
from young persons of her race, and that he was fa
miliar even with the possibilities of their familiarity,
she felt her freedom rendered vain by his silence, and
she immediately tried to think of the most reasonable
thing she could say. This would be, precisely, on the
subject of that freedom, which she now quickly spoke
of as complete. "That's of course by itself a great
boon ; so please don't think I don't know it. I can do
exactly what I like — anything in all the wide world.
I have n't a creature to ask — there 's not a finger to
stop me. I can shake about till I 'm black and blue.
That perhaps is n't all joy; but lots of people, I know,
would like to try it." He had appeared about to put
a question, but then had let her go on, which she
promptly did, for she understood him the next mo
ment as having thus taken it from her that her means
were as great as might be. She had simply given it to
him so, and this was all that would ever pass between
them on the odious head. Yet she could n't help also
knowing that an important effect, for his judgement,
or at least for his amusement — which was his feeling,
since, marvellously, he did have feeling — was pro
duced by it. All her little pieces had now then fallen
together for him like the morsels of coloured glass
that used to make combinations, under the hand, in
the depths of one of the polygonal peepshows of

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THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

childhood. "So that if it's a question of my doing
anything under the sun that will help — ! "

"You'll do anything under the sun? Good." He
took that beautifully, ever so pleasantly, for what it
was worth ; but time was needed — the minutes or
so were needed on the spot — to deal even provision
ally with the substantive question. It was conven
ient, in its degree, that there was nothing she would n't
do; but it seemed also highly and agreeably vague
that she should have to do anything. They thus ap
peared to be taking her, together, for the moment,
and almost for sociability, as prepared to proceed to
gratuitous extremities ; the upshot of which was in
turn that after much interrogation, auscultation, ex
ploration, much noting of his own sequences and
neglecting of hers, had duly kept up the vagueness,
they might have struck themselves, or may at least
strike us, as coming back from an undeterred but
useless voyage to the North Pole. Milly was ready,
under orders, for the North Pole; which fact was
doubtless what made a blinding anticlimax of her
friend's actual abstention from orders. "No," she
heard him again distinctly repeat it, "I don't want
you for the present to do anything at all; anything,
that is, but obey a small prescription or two that will
be made clear to you, and let me within a few days
come to see you at home."

It was at first heavenly. "Then you'll see Mrs.
Stringham." But she did n't mind a bit now.

"Well, I shan't be afraid of Mrs. Stringham."
And he said it once more as she asked once more:
"Absolutely not; I 'send' you nowhere. England's

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all right — anywhere that's pleasant, convenient,
decent, will be all right. You say you can do exactly
as you like. Oblige me therefore by being so good as
to do it. There 's only one thing : you ought of course,
now, as soon as I've seen you again, to get out of
London."

Milly thought. "May I then go back to the Con
tinent ? "

" By all means back to the Continent. Do go back
to the Continent."

"Then how will you keep seeing me? But per
haps," she quickly added, "you won't want to keep
seeing me."

He had it all ready; he had really everything all
ready. "I shall follow you up; though if you mean
that I don't want you to keep seeing me — "

"Well? "she asked.

It was only just here that he struck her the least
bit as stumbling. "Well, see all you can. That's
what it comes to. Worry about nothing. You have
at least no worries. It's a great rare chance."

She had got up, for she had had from him both that
he would send her something and would advise her
promptly of the date of his coming to her, by which
she was virtually dismissed. Yet for herself one or
two things kept her. "May I come back to England
too?"

"Rather! Whenever you like. But always, when
you do come, immediately let me know."

"Ah," said Milly, "it won't be a great going to and
fro."

"Then if you'll stay with us so much the better."

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THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

It touched her, the way he controlled his impa
tience of her; and the fact itself affected her as so
precious that she yielded to the wish to get more
from it. " So you don't think I 'm out of my mind ? "

"Perhaps that is" he smiled, "all that's the
matter."

She looked at him longer. "No, that's too good.
Shall I at any rate suffer ? "

"Not a bit."

"And yet then live?"

"My dear young lady," said her distinguished
friend, "isn't to 'live' exactly what I'm trying to
persuade you to take the trouble to do ? "

IV

SHE had gone out with these last words so in her ears
that when once she was well away — back this time
in the great square alone — it was as if some instant
application of them had opened out there before her.
It was positively, that effect, an excitement that car
ried her on; she went forward into space under the
sense of an impulse received — an impulse simple
and direct, easy above all to act upon. She was borne
up for the hour, and now she knew why she had
wanted to come by herself. No one in the world could
have sufficiently entered into her state; no tie would
have been close enough to enable a companion to
walk beside her without some disparity. She literally
felt, in this first flush, that her only company must be
the human race at large, present all round her, but
inspiringly impersonal, and that her only field must be,
then and there, the grey immensity of London. Grey
immensity had somehow of a sudden become her ele
ment; grey immensity was what her distinguished
friend had, for the moment, furnished her world with
and what the question of "living," as he put it to her,
living by option, by volition, inevitably took on for its
immediate face. She went straight before her, with
out weakness, altogether with strength; and still as
she went she was more glad to be alone, for nobody —
not Kate Croy, not Susan Shepherd either — would
have wished to rush with her as she rushed. She had

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THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

asked him at the last whether, being on foot, she might
go home so, or elsewhere, and he had replied as if
almost amused again at her extravagance: "You're
active, luckily, by nature — it 's beautiful : therefore
rejoice in it. Be active, without folly — for you're
not foolish : be as active as you can and as you like."
That had been in fact the final push, as well as the
touch that most made a mixture of her consciousness
— a strange mixture that tasted at one and the same
time of what she had lost and what had been given
her. It was wonderful to her, while she took her ran
dom course, that these quantities felt so equal : she
had been treated — had n't she ? — as if it were in her
power to live ; and yet one was n't treated so — was
one ? — unless it had come up, quite as much, that
one might die. The beauty of the bloom had gone
from the small old sense of safety — that was dis
tinct : she had left it behind her there for ever. But
the beauty of the idea of a great adventure, a big dim
experiment or struggle in which she might more re
sponsibly than ever before take a hand, had been
offered her instead. It was as if she had had to pluck
off her breast, to throw away, some friendly orna
ment, a familiar flower, a little old jewel, that was
part of her daily dress ; and to take up and shoulder
as a substitute some queer defensive weapon, a mus
ket, a spear, a battle-axe — conducive possibly in a
higher degree to a striking appearance, but demand
ing all the effort of the military posture.

She felt this instrument, for that matter, already
on her back, so that she proceeded now in very truth
after the fashion of a soldier on a march — proceeded

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as if, for her initiation, the first charge had been
sounded. She passed along unknown streets, over
dusty littery ways, between long rows of fronts not
enhanced by the August light; she felt good for miles
and only wanted to get lost; there were moments at
corners, where she stopped and chose her direction,
in which she quite lived up to his injunction to rejoice
that she was active. It was like a new pleasure to have
so new a reason ; she would affirm without delay her
option, her volition; taking this personal possession
of what surrounded her was a fair affirmation to start
with ; and she really did n't care if she made it at the
cost of alarms for Susie. Susie would wonder in due
course "whatever," as they said at the hotel, had be
come of her; yet this would be nothing either, prob
ably, to wonderments still in store. Wonderments in
truth, Milly felt, even now attended her steps : it was
quite as if she saw in people's eyes the reflexion of her
appearance and pace. She found herself moving at
times in regions visibly not haunted by odd-looking
girls from New York, duskily draped, sable-plumed,
all but incongruously shod and gazing about them
with extravagance; she might, from the curiosity she
clearly excited in by-ways, in side-streets peopled
with grimy children and costermongers' carts, which
she hoped were slums, literally have had her musket
on her shoulder, have announced herself as freshly
on the war-path. But for the fear of overdoing the
character she would here and there have begun con
versation, have asked her way; in spite of the fact that,
as this would help the requirements of adventure, her
way was exactly what she wanted not to know. The

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difficulty was that she at last accidentally found it;
she had come out, she presently saw, at the Regent's
Park, round which on two or three occasions with
Kate Croy her public chariot had solemnly rolled.
But she went into it further now; this was the real
thing; the real thing was to be quite away from the
pompous roads, well within the centre and on the
stretches of shabby grass. Here were benches and
smutty sheep; here were idle lads at games of ball,
with their cries mild in the thick air ; here were wan
derers anxious and tired like herself; here doubtless
were hundreds of others just in the same box. Their
box, their great common anxiety, what was it, in this
grim breathing-space, but the practical question of
life ? They could live if they would; that is, like her
self, they had been told so: she saw them all about
her, on seats, digesting the information, recognising
it again as something in a slightly different shape
familiar enough, the blessed old truth that they would
live if they could. All she thus shared with them
made her wish to sit in their company; which she so
far did that she looked for a bench that was empty,
eschewing a still emptier chair that she saw hard by
and for which she would have paid, with superiority,
a fee.

The last scrap of superiority had soon enough left
her, if only because she before long knew herself for
more tired than she had proposed. This and the
charm, after a fashion, of the situation in itself made
her linger and rest; there was an accepted spell in the
sense that nobody in the world knew where she was.
It was the first time in her life that this had happened ;

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somebody, everybody appeared to have known be
fore, at every instant of it, where she was ; so that she
was now suddenly able to put it to herself that that
had n't been a life. This present kind of thing there
fore might be — which was where precisely her dis
tinguished friend seemed to be wishing her to come
out. He wished her also, it was true, not to make, as
she was perhaps doing now, too much of her isolation ;
at the same time, however, as he clearly desired to
deny her no decent source of interest. He was inter
ested — she arrived at that — in her appealing to as
many sources as possible; and it fairly filtered into
her, as she sat and sat, that he was essentially prop
ping her up. Had she been doing it herself she would
have called it bolstering — the bolstering that was
simply for the weak; and she thought and thought as
she put together the proofs that it was as one of the
weak he was treating her. It was of course as one of
the weak that she had gone to him — but oh with how
sneaking a hope that he might pronounce her, as to
all indispensables, a veritable young lioness! What
indeed she was really confronted with was the con
sciousness that he had n't after all pronounced her
anything: she nursed herself into the sense that he
had beautifully got out of it. Did he think, however,
she wondered, that he could keep out of it to the end ?
— though as she weighed the question she yet felt it
a little unjust. Milly weighed, in this extraordinary
hour, questions numerous and strange; but she had
happily, before she moved, worked round to a simpli
fication. Stranger than anything for instance was the
effect of its rolling over her that, when one considered

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it, he might perhaps have "got out" by one door but
to come in with a beautiful beneficent dishonesty by
another. It kept her more intensely motionless there
that what he might fundamentally be "up to" was
some disguised intention of standing by her as a
friend. Was n't that what women always said they
wanted to do when they deprecated the addresses of
gentlemen they could n't more intimately go on with ?
It was what they, no doubt, sincerely fancied they
could make of men of whom they could n't make
husbands. And she did n't even reason that it was
by a similar law the expedient of doctors in general
for the invalids of whom they could n't make patients :
she was somehow so sufficiently aware that her doctor
was — however fatuous it might sound — exception
ally moved. This was the damning little fact — if
she could talk of damnation : that she could believe
herself to have caught him in the act of irrelevantly
liking her. She had n't gone to him to be liked, she
had gone to him to be judged; and he was quite a
great enough man to be in the habit, as a rule, of ob
serving the difference. She could like him, as she dis
tinctly did — that was another matter; all the more
that her doing so was now, so obviously for herself,
compatible with judgement. Yet it would have been
all portentously mixed had not, as we say, a final and
merciful wave, chilling rather, but washing clear,
come to her assistance.

It came of a sudden when all other thought was
spent. She had been asking herself why, if her case
was grave — and she knew what she meant by that —
he should have talked to her at all about what she

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might with futility " do " ; or why on the other hand,
if it were light, he should attach an importance to the
office of friendship. She had him, with her little lonely
acuteness — as acuteness went during the dog-days
in the Regent's Park — in a cleft stick: she either
mattered, and then she was ill; or she did n't matter,
and then she was well enough. Now he was " acting,"
as they said at home, as if she did matter — until he
should prove the contrary. It was too evident that a
person at his high pressure must keep his inconsist
encies, which were probably his highest amusements,
only for the very greatest occasions. Her prevision,
in fine, of just where she should catch him furnished
the light of that judgement in which we describe her
as daring to indulge. And the judgement it was that
made her sensation simple. He had distinguished her
— that was the chill. He had n't known — how could
he ? — that she was devilishly subtle, subtle exactly
in the manner of the suspected, the suspicious, the
condemned. He in fact confessed to it, in his way, as
to an interest in her combinations, her funny race, her
funny losses, her funny gains, her funny freedom, and,
no doubt, above all, her funny manners — funny, like
those of Americans at their best, without being vul
gar, legitimating amiability and helping to pass it off.
In his appreciation of these redundancies he dressed
out for her the compassion he so signally permitted
himself to waste ; but its operation for herself was as
directly divesting, denuding, exposing. It reduced her
to her ultimate state, which was that of a poor girl —
with her rent to pay for example — staring before her
in a great city. Milly had her rent to pay, her rent

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for her future; everything else but how to meet it fell
away from her in pieces, in tatters. This was the sensa
tion the great man had doubtless not purposed. Well,
she must go home, like the poor girl, and see. There
might after all be ways; the poor girl too would be
thinking. It came back for that matter perhaps to
views already presented. She looked about her again,
on her feet, at her scattered melancholy comrades —
some of them so melancholy as to be down on their
stomachs in the grass, turned away, ignoring, burrow
ing; she saw once more, with them, those two faces
of the question between which there was so little to
choose for inspiration. It was perhaps superficially
more striking that one could live if one would; but it
was more appealing, insinuating, irresistible in short,
that one would live if one could.

She found after this, for the day or two, more
amusement than she had ventured to count on in the
fact, if it were not a mere fancy, of deceiving Susie;
and she presently felt that what made the difference
was the mere fancy — as this was one — of a counter-
move to her great man. His taking on himself —
should he do so — to get at her companion made her
suddenly, she held, irresponsible, made any notion of
her own all right for her; though indeed at the very
moment she invited herself to enjoy this impunity she
became aware of new matter for surprise, or at least
for speculation. Her idea would rather have been
that Mrs. Stringham would have looked at her hard
— her sketch of the grounds of her independent long
excursion showing, she could feel, as almost cynically
superficial. Yet the dear woman so failed, in the

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event, to avail herself of any right of criticism that it
was sensibly tempting to wonder for an hour if Kate
Croy had been playing perfectly fair. Had n't she
possibly, from motives of the highest benevolence,
promptings of the finest anxiety, just given poor Susie
what she would have called the straight tip ? It must
immediately be mentioned, however, that, quite apart
from a remembrance of the distinctness of Kate's
promise, Milly, the next thing, found her explanation
in a truth that had the merit of being general. If Susie
at this crisis suspiciously spared her, it was really
that Susie was always suspiciously sparing her — yet
occasionally too with portentous and exceptional
mercies. The girl was conscious of how she dropped
at times into inscrutable impenetrable deferences —
attitudes that, though without at all intending it,
made a difference for familiarity, for the ease of in
timacy. It was as if she recalled herself to manners,
to the law of court-etiquette — which last note above
all helped our young woman to a just appreciation.
It was definite for her, even if not quite solid, that
to treat her as a princess was a positive need of her
companion's mind ; wherefore she could n't help it if
this lady had her transcendent view of the way the
class in question were treated. Susan had read his
tory, had read Gibbon and Froude and Saint-Simon;
she had high lights as to the special allowances made
for the class, and, since she saw them, when young,
as effete and overtutored, inevitably ironic and in
finitely refined, one must take it for amusing if she
inclined to an indulgence verily Byzantine. If one
could only be Byzantine ! — was n't that what she in-

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sidiously led one on to sigh ? Milly tried to oblige
her — for it really placed Susan herself so handsomely
to be Byzantine now. The great ladies of that race
— it would be somewhere in Gibbon — were ap
parently not questioned about their mysteries. But
oh poor Milly and hers ! Susan at all events proved
scarce more inquisitive than if she had been a mosaic
at Ravenna. Susan was a porcelain monument to the
odd moral that consideration might, like cynicism,
have abysses. Besides, the Puritan finally disencum
bered — ! What starved generations wasn't Mrs.
Stringham, in fancy, going to make up for ?

Kate Croy came straight to the hotel — came that
evening shortly before dinner; specifically and pub
licly moreover, in a hansom that, driven apparently
very fast, pulled up beneath their windows almost
with the clatter of an accident, a "smash." Milly,
alone, as happened, in the great garnished void of
their sitting-room, where, a little, really, like a caged
Byzantine, she had been pacing through the queer
long-drawn almost sinister delay of night, an effect
she yet liked — Milly, at the sound, one of the French
windows standing open, passed out to the balcony
that overhung, with pretensions, the general en
trance, and so was in time for the look that Kate,
alighting, paying her cabman, happened to send up
to the front. The visitor moreover had a shilling
back to wait for, during which Milly, from the bal
cony, looked down at her, and a mute exchange, but
with smiles and nods, took place between them on
what had occurred in the morning. It was what Kate
had called for, and the tone was thus almost by acci-

BOOK FIFTH

dent determined for Milly before her friend came up.
What was also, however, determined for her was,
again, yet irrepressibly again, that the image pre
sented to her, the splendid young woman who looked
so particularly handsome in impatience, with the fine
freedom of her signal, was the peculiar property of
somebody else's vision, that this fine freedom in short
was the fine freedom she showed Mr. Densher. Just
so was how she looked to him, and just so was how
Milly was held by her — held as by the strange sense
of seeing through that distant person's eyes. It lasted,
as usual, the strange sense, but fifty seconds; yet in so
lasting it produced an effect. It produced in fact more
than one, and we take them in their order. The first
was that it struck our young woman as absurd to say
that a girl's looking so to a man could possibly be
without connexions; and the second was that by the
time Kate had got into the room Milly was in mental
possession of the main connexion it must have for
herself.

She produced this commodity on the spot — pro
duced it in straight response to Kate's frank "Well,
what ? " The enquiry bore of course, with Kate's
eagerness, on the issue of the morning's scene, the
great man's latest wisdom, and it doubtless affected
Milly a little as the cheerful demand for news is apt
to affect troubled spirits when news is not, in one of
the neater forms, prepared for delivery. She could n't
have said what it was exactly that on the instant de
termined her; the nearest description of it would
perhaps have been as the more vivid impression of all
her friend took for granted. The contrast between

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THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

this free quantity and the maze of possibilities through
which, for hours, she had herself been picking her
way, put on, in short, for the moment, a grossness
that even friendly forms scarce lightened : it helped
forward in fact the revelation to herself that she ab
solutely had nothing to tell. Besides which, certainly,
there was something else — an influence at the par
ticular juncture still more obscure. Kate had lost,
on the way upstairs, the look — the look — that made
her young hostess so subtly think and one of the signs
of which was that she never kept it for many moments
at once; yet she stood there, none the less, so in her
bloom and in her strength, so completely again the
"handsome girl" beyond all others, the "handsome
girl" for whom Milly had at first gratefully taken
her, that to meet her now with the note of the plaint
ive would amount somehow to a surrender, to a con
fession. She would never in her life be ill ; the greatest
doctor would keep her, at the worst, the fewest min
utes; and it was as if she had asked just with all this
practical impeccability for all that was most mortal in
her friend. These things, for Milly, inwardly danced
their dance; but the vibration produced and the dust
kicked up had lasted less than our account of them.
Almost before she knew it she was answering, and
answering beautifully, with no consciousness of fraud,
only as with a sudden flare of the famous "will
power " she had heard about, read about, and which
was what her medical adviser had mainly thrown her
back on. "Oh it's all right. He's lovely."

Kate was splendid, and it would have been clear
for Milly now, had the further presumption been

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BOOK FIFTH

needed, that she had said no word to Mrs. Stringham.
" You mean you 've been absurd ? "

"Absurd." It was a simple word to say, but the
consequence of it, for our young woman, was that
she felt it, as soon as spoken, to have done something
for her safety.

And Kate really hung on her lips. "There's no
thing at all the matter?"

" Nothing to worry about. I shall need a little watch
ing, but I shan't have to do anything dreadful, or
even in the least inconvenient. I can do in fact as I
like." It was wonderful for Milly how just to put it so
made all its pieces fall at present quite properly into
their places.

Yet even before the full effect came Kate had
seized, kissed, blessed her. "My love, you're too
sweet ! It 's too dear ! But it 's as I was sure." Then
she grasped the full beauty. "You can do as you
like?"

" Quite. Is n't it charming ? "

"Ah but catch you," Kate triumphed with gaiety,
"not doing — ! And what shall you do?"

" For the moment simply enjoy it. Enjoy " —
Milly was completely luminous — "having got out of
my scrape."

"Learning, you mean, so easily, that you are well ?"

It was as if Kate had but too conveniently put the
words into her mouth. "Learning, I mean, so easily,
that I am well."

" Only no one 's of course well enough to stay in
London now. He can't," Kate went on, "want this
of you."

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THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

" Mercy no — I 'm to knock about. I 'm to go to
places."

" But not beastly ' climates ' — Engadines, Rivie-
ras, boredoms ? "

"No; just, as I say, where I prefer. I'm to go in
for pleasure."

"Oh the duck!" — Kate, with her own shades of
familiarity, abounded. "But what kind of pleas
ure?"

"The highest," Milly smiled.

Her friend met it as nobly. "Which is the high
est?"

"Well, it's just our chance to find out. You must
help me."

"What have I wanted to do but help you," Kate
asked, "from the moment I first laid eyes on you ?"
Yet with this too Kate had her wonder. " I like your
talking, though, about that. What help, with your
luck all round, do you need ? "

MILLY indeed at last could n't say; so that she had
really for the time brought it along to the point so
oddly marked for her by her visitor's arrival, the
truth that she was enviably strong. She carried this
out, from that evening, for each hour still left her,
and the more easily perhaps that the hours were now
narrowly numbered. All she actually waited for was
Sir Luke Strett's promised visit; as to her proceeding
on which, however, her mind was quite made up.
Since he wanted to get at Susie he should have the
freest access, and then perhaps he would see how he
liked it. What was between them they might settle
as between them, and any pressure it should lift from
her own spirit they were at liberty to convert to their
use. If the dear man wished to fire Susan Shepherd
with a still higher ideal, he would only after all, at the
worst, have Susan on his hands. If devotion, in a
word, was what it would come up for the interested
pair to organise, she was herself ready to consume it
as the dressed and served dish. He had talked to her
of her "appetite," her account of which, she felt,
must have been vague. But for devotion, she could
now see, this appetite would be of the best. Gross,
greedy, ravenous — these were doubtless the proper
names for her : she was at all events resigned in ad
vance to the machinations of sympathy. The day
that followed her lonely excursion was to be the last

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THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

but two or three of their stay in London; and the
evening of that day practically ranked for them as, in
the matter of outside relations, the last of all. People
were by this time quite scattered, and many of those
who had so liberally manifested in calls, in cards, in
evident sincerity about visits, later on, over the land,
had positively passed in music out of sight; whether
as members, these latter, more especially, of Mrs.
Lowder's immediate circle or as members of Lord
Mark's — our friends being by this time able to
make the distinction. The general pitch had thus
decidedly dropped, and the occasions still to be dealt
with were special and few. One of these, for Milly,
announced itself as the doctor's call already men
tioned, as to which she had now had a note from him :
the single other, of importance, was their appointed
leave-taking — for the shortest separation — in re
spect to Mrs. Lowder and Kate. The aunt and the
niece were to dine with them alone, intimately and
easily — as easily as should be consistent with the
question of their afterwards going on together to some
absurdly belated party, at which they had had it from
Aunt Maud that they would do well to show. Sir
Luke was to make his appearance on the morrow of
this, and in respect to that complication Milly had al
ready her plan.

The night was at all events hot and stale, and it
was late enough by the time the four ladies had been
gathered in, for their small session, at the hotel, where
the windows were still open to the high balconies and
the flames of the candles, behind the pink shades —
disposed as for the vigil of watchers — were motion-

262

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less in the air in which the season lay dead. What
was presently settled among them was that Milly,
who betrayed on this occasion a preference more
marked than usual, should n't hold herself obliged
to climb that evening the social stair, however it
might stretch to meet her, and that, Mrs. Lowder and
Mrs. Stringham facing the ordeal together, Kate
Croy should remain with her and await their return.
It was a pleasure to Milly, ever, to send Susan Shep
herd forth; she saw her go with complacency, liked,
as it were, to put people off with her, and noted with
satisfaction, when she so moved to the carriage, the
further denudation — a markedly ebbing tide — of
her little benevolent back. If it was n't quite Aunt
Maud's ideal, moreover, to take out the new Ameri
can girl's funny friend instead of the new American
girl herself, nothing could better indicate the range of
that lady's merit than the spirit in which — as at the
present hour for instance — she made the best of the
minor advantage. And she did this with a broad
cheerful absence of illusion ; she did it — confessing
even as much to poor Susie — because, frankly, she
was good-natured. When Mrs. Stringham observed
that her own light was too abjectly borrowed and that
it was as a link alone, fortunately not missing, that
she was valued, Aunt Maud concurred to the extent
of the remark: "Well, my dear, you're better than
nothing." To-night furthermore it came up for Milly
that Aunt Maud had something particular in mind.
Mrs. Stringham, before adjourning with her, had
gone off for some shawl or other accessory, and Kate,
as if a little impatient for their withdrawal, had wan-

263

THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

dered out to the balcony, where she hovered for the
time unseen, though with scarce more to look at than
the dim London stars and the cruder glow, up the
street, on a corner, of a small public-house in front of
which a fagged cab-horse was thrown into relief.
Mrs. Lowder made use of the moment : Milly felt as
soon as she had spoken that what she was doing was
somehow for use.

" Dear Susan tells me that you saw in America Mr.
Densher — whom I've never till now, as you may
have noticed, asked you about. But do you mind at
last, in connexion with him, doing something for
me?" She had lowered her fine voice to a depth,
though speaking with all her rich glibness ; and Milly,
after a small sharpness of surprise, was already guess
ing the sense of her appeal. "Will you name him, in
any way you like, to her " — and Aunt Maud gave a
nod at the window; "so that you may perhaps find
out whether he 's back ? "

Ever so many things, for Milly, fell into line at this ;
it was a wonder, she afterwards thought, that she
could be conscious of so many at once. She smiled
hard, however, for them all. " But I don't know that
it's important to me to 'find out.'" The array of
things was further swollen, however, even as she said
this, by its striking her as too much to say. She there
fore tried as quickly to say less. "Except you mean
of course that it's important to you." She fancied
Aunt Maud was looking at her almost as hard as she
was herself smiling, and that gave her another im
pulse. "You know I never have yet named him to
her; so that if I should break out now — "

264

BOOK FIFTH

"Well ? " — Mrs. Lowder waited.

"Why she may wonder what I've been making
a mystery of. She has n't mentioned him, you know,"
Milly went on, "herself."

"No" — her friend a little heavily weighed it —
"she wouldn't. So it's she, you see then, who has
made the mystery."

Yes, Milly but wanted to see; only there was so
much. "There has been of course no particular
reason." Yet that indeed was neither here nor there.
"Do you think," she asked, "he is back?"

"It will be about his time, I gather, and rather a
comfort to me definitely to know."

"Then can't you ask her yourself?"

"Ah we never speak of him!"

It helped Milly for the moment to the convenience
of a puzzled pause. " Do you mean he 's an acquaint
ance of whom you disapprove for her ? "

Aunt Maud, as well, just hung fire. " I disapprove
of her for the poor young man. She does n't care for
him."

"And he cares so much — ?"

"Too much, too much. And my fear is," said
Mrs. Lowder, "that he privately besets her. She
keeps it to herself, but I don't want her worried.
Neither, in truth," she both generously and confident
ially concluded, "do I want him."

Milly showed all her own effort to meet the case.
"But what can /do?"

"You can find out where they are. If I myself
try," Mrs. Lowder explained, "I shall appear to
treat them as if I supposed them deceiving me."

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THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

"And you don't. You don't," Milly mused for her,
"suppose them deceiving you."

"Well," said Aunt Maud, whose fine onyx eyes
failed to blink even though Milly's questions might
have been taken as drawing her rather further than
she had originally meant to go — "well, Kate's
thoroughly aware of my views for her, and that I
take her being with me at present, in the way she
is with me, if you know what I mean, for a loyal
assent to them. Therefore as my views don't happen
to provide a place at all for Mr. Densher, much,
in a manner, as I like him " — therefore in short she
had been prompted to this step, though she com
pleted her sense, but sketchily, with the rattle of her
large fan.

It assisted them for the moment perhaps, however,
that Milly was able to pick out of her sense what
might serve as the clearest part of it. " You do like
him then ? "

"Oh dear yes. Don't you ?"

Milly waited, for the question was somehow as
the sudden point of something sharp on a nerve that
winced. She just caught her breath, but she had
ground for joy afterwards, she felt, in not really having
failed to choose with quickness sufficient, out of
fifteen possible answers, the one that would best serve
her. She was then almost proud, as well, that she had
cheerfully smiled. "I did — three times — in New
York." So came and went, in these simple words,
the speech that was to figure for her, later on, that
night, as the one she had ever uttered that cost her
most. She was to lie awake for the gladness of not

266

BOOK FIFTH

having taken any line so really inferior as the denial of
a happy impression.

For Mrs. Lowder also moreover her simple words
were the right ones ; they were at any rate, that lady's
laugh showed, in the natural note of the racy. " You
dear American thing! But people may be very good
and yet not good for what one wants."

"Yes," the girl assented, "even I suppose when
what one wants is something very good."

" Oh my child, it would take too long just now to
tell you all / want ! I want everything at once and
together — and ever so much for you too, you know.
But you've seen us," Aunt Maud continued; "you'll
have made out."

"Ah," said Milly, "I dont make out;" for again
— it came lhat way in rushes — she felt an obscurity
in things. "Why, if our friend here doesn't like
him-

" Should I conceive her interested in keeping things
from me ?" Mrs. Lowder did justice to the question.
"My dear, how can you ask? Put yourself in her
place. She meets me, but on her terms. Proud young
women are proud young women. And proud old ones
are — well, what / am. Fond of you as we both are,
you can help us."

Milly tried to be inspired. " Does it come back then
to my asking her straight ? "

At this, however, finally, Aunt Maud threw her up.
"Oh if you've so many reasons not — I"

"I've not so many," Milly smiled — "but I've
one. If I break out so suddenly on my knowing him,
what will she make of my not having spoken before ? "

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THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

Mrs. Lowder looked blank at it. "Why should
you care what she makes ? You may have only been
decently discreet."

"Ah I have been," the girl made haste to say.

" Besides," her friend went on, " I suggested to you,
through Susan, your line."

"Yes, that reason's a reason for me"

"And for me" Mrs. Lowder insisted. "She's not
therefore so stupid as not to do justice to grounds so
marked. You can tell her perfectly that I had asked
you to say nothing."

"And may I tell her that you've asked me now to
speak?"

Mrs. Lowder might well have thought, yet, oddly,
this pulled her up. "You can't do it without — ?"

Milly was almost ashamed to be raising so many
difficulties. "I'll do what I can if you'll kindly tell
me one thing more." She faltered a little — it was
so prying; but she brought it out. "Will he have
been writing to her ? "

"It's exactly, my dear, what I should like to
know!" Mrs. Lowder was at last impatient. "Push
in for yourself and I dare say she '11 tell you."

Even now, all the same, Milly had not quite fallen
back. " It will be pushing in," she continued to smile,
"for you" She allowed her companion, however, no
time to take this up. "The point will be that if he has
been writing she may have answered."

" But what point, you subtle thing, is that ? "

"It is n't subtle, it seems to me, but quite simple,"
Milly said, "that if she has answered she has very
possibly spoken of me."

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"Very certainly indeed. But what difference will
it make?"

The girl had a moment, at this, of thinking it nat
ural Mrs. Lowder herself should so fail of subtlety.
"It will make the difference that he'll have written
her in reply that he knows me. And that, in turn,"
our young woman explained, "will give an oddity to
my own silence."

"How so, if she's perfectly aware of having given
you no opening ? The only oddity," Aunt Maud
lucidly professed, "is for yourself. It's in her not
having spoken."

"Ah there we are!" said Milly.

And she had uttered it, evidently, in a tone that
struck her friend. "Then it has troubled you ?"

But the enquiry had only to be made to bring the
rare colour with fine inconsequence to her face. " Not
really the least little bit!" And, quickly feeling the
need to abound in this sense, she was on the point, to
cut short, of declaring that she cared, after all, no
scrap how much she obliged. Only she felt at this
instant too the intervention of still other things. Mrs.
Lowder was in the first place already beforehand,
already affected as by the sudden vision of her having
herself pushed too far. Milly could never judge from
her face of her uppermost motive — it was so little,
in its hard smooth sheen, that kind of human counten
ance. She looked hard when she spoke fair; the only
thing was that when she spoke hard she did n't like
wise look soft. Something, none the less, had arisen
in her now — a full appreciable tide, entering by the
rupture of some bar. She announced that if what she

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had asked was to prove in the least a bore her young
friend was not to dream of it; making her young friend
at the same time, by the change in her tone, dream on
the spot more profusely. She spoke, with a belated
light, Milly could apprehend — she could always
apprehend — from pity; and the result of that per
ception, for the girl, was singular : it proved to her as
quickly that Kate, keeping her secret, had been
straight with her. From Kate distinctly then, as to
why she was to be pitied, Aunt Maud knew nothing,
and was thereby simply putting in evidence the fine
side of her own character. This fine side was that she
could almost at any hour, by a kindled preference or a
diverted energy, glow for another interest than her
own. She exclaimed as well, at this moment, that
Milly must have been thinking round the case much
more than she had supposed ; and this remark could
affect the girl as quickly and as sharply as any other
form of the charge of weakness. It was what every
one, if she did n't look out, would soon be saying —
"There's something the matter with you!" What
one was therefore one's self concerned immediately to
establish was that there was nothing at all. "I shall
like to help you; I shall like, so far as that goes, to
help Kate herself," she made such haste as she could
to declare ; her eyes wandering meanwhile across the
width of the room to that dusk of the balcony in
which their companion perhaps a little unaccountably
lingered. She suggested hereby her impatience to
begin; she almost overtly wondered at the length of
the opportunity this friend was giving them — re
ferring it, however, so far as words went, to the other

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friend and breaking off with an amused: "How tre
mendously Susie must be beautifying!"

It only marked Aunt Maud, none the less, as too
preoccupied for her allusion. The onyx eyes were
fixed upon her with a polished pressure that must
signify some enriched benevolence. "Let it go, my
dear. We shall after all soon enough see."

"If he has come back we shall certainly see," Milly
after a moment replied; "for he'll probably feel that
he can't quite civilly not come to see me. Then there"
she remarked, "we shall be. It would n't then, you
see, come through Kate at all — it would come
through him. Except," she wound up with a smile,
"that he won't find me."

She had the most extraordinary sense of interesting
her guest, in spite of herself, more than she wanted ;
it was as if her doom so floated her on that she
could n't stop — by very much the same trick it had
played her with her doctor. "Shall you run away
from him ? "

She neglected the question, wanting only now to
get off. "Then," she went on, "you '11 deal with Kate
directly."

"Shall you run away from her?9' Mrs. Lowder
profoundly enquired, while they became aware of
Susie's return through the room, opening out behind
them, in which they had dined.

This affected Milly as giving her but an instant;
and suddenly, with it, everything she felt in the con
nexion rose to her lips for a question that, even as she
put it, she knew she was failing to keep colourless.
"Is it your own belief that he is with her ?"

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Aunt Maud took it in — took in, that is, everything
of the tone that she just wanted her not to; and the
result for some seconds was but to make their eyes
meet in silence. Mrs. Stringham had rejoined them
and was asking if Kate had gone — an enquiry at once
answered by this young lady's reappearance. They
saw her again in the open window, where, looking at
them, she had paused — producing thus on Aunt
Maud's part almost too impressive a "Hush!" Mrs.
Lowder indeed without loss of time smothered any
danger in a sweeping retreat with Susie; but Milly's
words to her, just uttered, about dealing with her
niece directly, struck our young woman as already
recoiling on herself. Directness, however evaded,
would be, fully, for her; nothing in fact would ever
have been for her so direct as the evasion. Kate had
remained in the window, very handsome and upright,
the outer dark framing in a highly favourable way
her summery simplicities and lightnesses of dress.
Milly had, given the relation of space, no real fear
she had heard their talk; only she hovered there as
with conscious eyes and some added advantage. Then
indeed, with small delay, her friend sufficiently saw.
The conscious eyes, the added advantage were but
those she had now always at command — those
proper to the person Milly knew as known to Mer-
ton Densher. It was for several seconds again as if
the total of her identity had been that of the person
known to him — a determination having for result
another sharpness of its own. Kate had positively
but to be there just as she was to tell her he had
come back. It seemed to pass between them in fine

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without a word that he was in London, that he was
perhaps only round the corner; and surely therefore
no dealing of Milly's with her would yet have been
so direct.

VI

IT was doubtless because this queer form of direct
ness had in itself, for the hour, seemed so sufficient
that Milly was afterwards aware of having really, all
the while — during the strange indescribable session
before the return of their companions — done nothing
to intensify it. If she was most aware only after
wards, under the long and discurtained ordeal of the
morrow's dawn, that was because she had really, till
their evening's end came, ceased after a little to miss
anything from their ostensible comfort. What was
behind showed but in gleams and glimpses ; what was
in front never at all confessed to not holding the stage.
Three minutes had n't passed before Milly quite
knew she should have done nothing Aunt Maud had
just asked her. She knew it moreover by much the
same light that had acted for her with that lady and
with Sir Luke Strett. It pressed upon her then and
there that she was still in a current determined,
through her indifference, timidity, bravery, generosity
— she scarce could say which — by others ; that not
she but the current acted, and that somebody else
always was the keeper of the lock or the dam. Kate
for example had but to open the flood-gate: the cur
rent moved in its mass — the current, as it had been,
of her doing as Kate wanted. What, somehow, in the
most extraordinary way in the world, had Kate
wanted but to be, of a sudden, more interesting than
she had ever been ? Milly, for their evening then, quite

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held her breath with the appreciation of it. If she
had n't been sure her companion would have had
nothing, from her moments with Mrs. Lowder, to go
by, she would almost have seen the admirable creat
ure "cutting in" to anticipate a danger. This fan
tasy indeed, while they sat together, dropped after a
little; even if only because other fantasies multiplied
and clustered, making fairly, for our young woman,
the buoyant medium in which her friend talked and
moved. They sat together, I say, but Kate moved as
much as she talked; she figured there, restless and
charming, just perhaps a shade perfunctory, repeat
edly quitting her place, taking slowly, to and fro, in
the trailing folds of her light dress, the length of the
room — almost avowedly performing for the pleasure
of her hostess.

Mrs. Lowder had said to Milly at Matcham that
she and her niece, as allies, could practically conquer
the world; but though it was a speech about which
there had even then been a vague grand glamour the
girl read into it at present more of an approach to a
meaning. Kate, for that matter, by herself, could
conquer anything, and she, Milly Theale, was prob
ably concerned with the "world" only as the small
scrap of it that most impinged on her and that was
therefore first to be dealt with. On this basis of being
dealt with she would doubtless herself do her share of
the conquering : she would have something to supply,
Kate something to take — each of them thus, to that
tune, something for squaring with Aunt Maud's ideal.
This in short was what it came to now — that the oc
casion, in the quiet late lamplight, had the quality of

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a rough rehearsal of the possible big drama. Milly
knew herself dealt with — handsomely, completely:
she surrendered to the knowledge, for so it was, she
felt, that she supplied her helpful force. And what
Kate had to take Kate took as freely and to all appear
ance as gratefully ; accepting afresh, with each of her
long, slow walks, the relation between them so estab
lished and consecrating her companion's surrender
simply by the interest she gave it. The interest to
Milly herself we naturally mean ; the interest to Kate
Milly felt as probably inferior. It easily and largely
came for their present talk, for the quick flight of the
hour before the breach of the spell — it all came,
when considered, from the circumstance, not in the
least abnormal, that the handsome girl was in extra
ordinary "form." Milly remembered her having said
that she was at her best late at night; remembered it
by its having, with its fine assurance, made her won
der when she was at her best and how happy people
must be who had such a fixed time. She had no time
at all ; she was never at her best — unless indeed it
were exactly, as now, in listening, watching, admiring,
collapsing. If Kate moreover, quite mercilessly, had
never been so good, the beauty and the marvel of it
was that she had never really been so frank : being a
person of such a calibre, as Milly would have said,
that, even while "dealing" with you and thereby, as
it were, picking her steps, she could let herself go,
could, in irony, in confidence, in extravagance, tell
you things she had never told before. That was the
impression — that she was telling things, and quite
conceivably for her own relief as well; almost as if

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the errors of vision, the mistakes of proportion, the
residuary innocence of spirit still to be remedied on
the part of her auditor, had their moments of proving
too much for her nerves. She went at them just now,
these sources of irritation, with an amused energy
that it would have been open to Milly to regard as
cynical and that was nevertheless called for — as to
this the other was distinct — by the way that in cer
tain connexions the American mind broke down. It
seemed at least — the American mind as sitting there
thrilled and dazzled in Milly — not to understand
English society without a separate confrontation with
all the cases. It could n't proceed by — there was
some technical term she lacked until Milly suggested
both analogy and induction, and then, differently,
instinct, none of which were right : it had to be led up
and introduced to each aspect of the monster, enabled
to walk all round it, whether for the consequent exag
gerated ecstasy or for the still more (as appeared to
this critic) disproportionate shock. It might, the
monster, Kate conceded, loom large for those born
amid forms less developed and therefore no doubt
less amusing; it might on some sides be a strange and
dreadful monster, calculated to devour the unwary,
to abase the proud, to scandalise the good; but if one
had to live with it one must, not to be for ever sitting
up, learn how : which was virtually in short to-night
what the handsome girl showed herself as teaching.
She gave away publicly, in this process, Lancaster
Gate and everything it contained; she gave away,
hand over hand, Milly's thrill continued to note, Aunt
Maud and Aunt Maud's glories and Aunt Maud's

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complacencies; she gave herself away most of all, and
it was naturally what most contributed to her can
dour. She did n't speak to her friend once more, in
Aunt Maud's strain, of how they could scale the skies ;
she spoke, by her bright perverse preference on this
occasion, of the need, in the first place, of being neither
stupid nor vulgar. It might have been a lesson, for
our young American, in the art of seeing things as
they were — a lesson so various and so sustained that
the pupil had, as we have shown, but receptively to
gape. The odd thing furthermore was that it could
serve its purpose while explicitly disavowing every
personal bias. It was n't that she disliked Aunt Maud,
who was everything she had on other occasions de
clared; but the dear woman, ineffaceably stamped by
inscrutable nature and a dreadful art, was n't — how
could she be ? — what she was n't. She was n't any
one. She was n't anything. She was n't anywhere.
Milly must n't think it — one could n't, as a good
friend, let her. Those hours at Matcham were in-
espereesy were pure manna from heaven; or if not
wholly that perhaps, with humbugging old Lord
Mark as a backer, were vain as a ground for hopes
and calculations. Lord Mark was very well, but he
was n't the cleverest creature in England, and even if
he had been he still would n't have been the most ob
liging. He weighed it out in ounces, and indeed each
of the pair was really waiting for what the other
would put down.

"She has put down you" said Milly, attached to
the subject still; "and I think what you mean is that,
on the counter, she still keeps hold of you." *

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"Lest" — Kate took it up — "he should suddenly
grab me and run ? Oh as he is n't ready to run he 's
much less ready, naturally, to grab. I am — you 're
so far right as that — on the counter, when I 'm not
in the shop- window; in and out of which I'm thus
conveniently, commercially whisked : the essence, all
of it, of my position, and the price, as properly, of
my aunt's protection." Lord Mark was substan
tially what she had begun with as soon as they were
alone; the impression was even yet with Milly of her
having sounded his name, having imposed it, as a
topic, in direct opposition to the other name that Mrs.
Lowder had left in the air and that all her own look,
as we have seen, kept there at first for her companion.
The immediate strange effect had been that of her
consciously needing, as it were, an alibi — which,
successfully, she so found. She had worked it to the
end, ridden it to and fro across the course marked for
Milly by Aunt Maud, and now she had quite, so to
speak, broken it in. "The bore is that if she wants
him so much — wants him, heaven forgive her! for
me — he has put us all out, since your arrival, by
wanting somebody else. I don't mean somebody else
than you."

Milly threw off the charm sufficiently to shake her
head. "Then I have n't made out who it is. If I'm
any part of his alternative he had better stop where
he is."

"Truly, truly ? — always, always ?"

Milly tried to insist with an equal gaiety. "Would
you like me to swear ? "

Kate appeared for a moment — though that was
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THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

doubtless but gaiety too — to think. "Haven't we
been swearing enough ? "

"You have perhaps, but I have n't, and I ought to
give you the equivalent. At any rate there it is.
'Truly, truly ' as you say — ' always, always/ So I 'm
not in the way."

"Thanks," said Kate — "but that doesn't help

me."

"Oh it's as simplifying for him that I speak of it."

"The difficulty really is that he's a person with
so many ideas that it 's particularly hard to simplify
for him. That's exactly of course what Aunt Maud
has been trying. He won't," Kate firmly continued,
"make up his mind about me."

"Well," Milly smiled, "give him time."

Her friend met it in perfection. "One 's doing that
— one is. But one remains all the same but one of
his ideas."

"There's no harm in that," Milly returned, "if
you come out in the end as the best of them. What 's
a man," she pursued, "especially an ambitious one,
without a variety of ideas ? "

"No doubt. The more the merrier." And Kate
looked at her grandly. "One can but hope to come
out, and do nothing to prevent it."

All of which made for the impression, fantastic or
not, of the alibi. The splendour, the grandeur were
for Milly the bold ironic spirit behind it, so interest
ing too in itself. What, further, was not less interest
ing was the fact, as our young woman noted it, that
Kate confined her point to the difficulties, so far as
she was concerned, raised only by Lord Mark. She

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referred now to none that her own taste might pre
sent; which circumstance again played its little part.
She was doing what she liked in respect to another
person, but she was in no way committed to the other
person, and her moreover talking of Lord Mark as
not young and not true were only the signs of her clear
self-consciousness, were all in the line of her slightly
hard but scarce the less graceful extravagance. She
did n't wish to show too much her consent to be ar
ranged for, but that was a different thing from not
wishing sufficiently to give it. There was something
on it all, as well, that Milly still found occasion to say.
" If your aunt has been, as you tell me, put out by me,
I feel she has remained remarkably kind."

"Oh but she has — whatever might have hap
pened in that respect — plenty of use for you ! You
put her in, my dear, more than you put her out. You
don't half see it, but she has clutched your petticoat.
You can do anything — you can do, I mean, lots that
we can't. You 're an outsider, independent and stand
ing by yourself; you 're not hideously relative to tiers
and tiers of others." And Kate, facing in that direc
tion, went further and further; wound up, while Milly
gaped, with extraordinary words. "We're of no use
to you — it 's decent to tell you. You 'd be of use to
us, but that 's a different matter. My honest advice to
you would be — " she went indeed all lengths — "to
drop us while you can. It would be funny if you
did n't soon see how awfully better you can do. We Ve
not really done for you the least thing worth speaking
of — nothing you might n't easily have had in some
other way. Therefore you're under no obligation.

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You won't want us next year; we shall only continue
to want you. But that's no reason for you, and you
must n't pay too dreadfully for poor Mrs. Stringham's
having let you in. She has the best conscience in the
world ; she 's enchanted with what she has done ; but
you should n't take your people from her. It has been
quite awful to see you do it."

Milly tried to be amused, so as not — it was too
absurd — to be fairly frightened. Strange enough
indeed — if not natural enough — that, late at night
thus, in a mere mercenary house, with Susie away, a
want of confidence should possess her. She recalled,
with all the rest of it, the next day, piecing things to
gether in the dawn, that she had felt herself alone
with a creature who paced like a panther. That was a
violent image, but it made her a little less ashamed of
having been scared. For all her scare, none the less,
she had now the sense to find words. "And yet with
out Susie I should n't have had you."

It had been at this point, however, that Kate flick
ered highest. "Oh you may very well loathe me yet ! "

Really at last, thus, it had been too much ; as, with
her own least feeble flare, after a wondering watch,
Milly had shown. She hadn't cared; she had too
much wanted to know; and, though a small solemnity
of remonstrance, a sombre strain, had broken into
her tone, it was to figure as her nearest approach to
serving Mrs. Lowder. "Why do you say such things
to me?"

This unexpectedly had acted, by a sudden turn of
Kate's attitude, as a happy speech. She had risen as
she spoke, and Kate had stopped before her, shining

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at her instantly with a softer brightness. Poor Milly
hereby enjoyed one of her views of how people, winc
ing oddly, were often touched by her. "Because
you 're a dove." With which she felt herself ever so
delicately, so considerately, embraced ; not with famil
iarity or as a liberty taken, but almost ceremonially
and in the manner of an accolade ; partly as if, though
a dove who could perch on a finger, one were also
a princess with whom forms were to be observed.
It even came to her, through the touch of her com
panion's lips, that this form, this cool pressure, fairly
sealed the sense of what Kate had just said. It was
moreover, for the girl, like an inspiration : she found
herself accepting as the right one, while she caught her
breath with relief, the name so given her. She met it
on the instant as she would have met revealed truth ;
it lighted up the strange dusk in which she lately had
walked. That was what was the matter with her. She
was a dove. Oh was nt she ? — it echoed within her
as she became aware of the sound, outside, of the re
turn of their friends. There was, the next thing, little
enough doubt about it after Aunt Maud had been
two minutes in the room. She had come up, Mrs.
Lowder, with Susan — which she need n't have done,
at that hour, instead of letting Kate come down to
her; so that Milly could be quite sure it was to catch
hold, in some way, of the loose end they had left.
Well, the way she did catch was simply to make the
point that it did n't now in the least matter. She had
mounted the stairs for this, and she had her moment
again with her younger hostess while Kate, on the
spot, as the latter at the time noted, gave Susan Shep-

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THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

herd unwonted opportunities. Kate was in other
words, as Aunt Maud engaged her friend, listening
with the handsomest response to Mrs. Stringham's
impression of the scene they had just quitted. It was
in the tone of the fondest indulgence — almost, really,
that of dove cooing to dove — that Mrs. Lowder ex
pressed to Milly the hope that it had all gone beauti
fully. Her " all " had an ample benevolence; it soothed
and simplified ; she spoke as if it were the two young
women, not she and her comrade, who had been fac
ing the town together. But Milly's answer had pre
pared itself while Aunt Maud was bn the stair; she
had felt in a rush all the reasons that would make it
the most dovelike; and she gave it, while she was
about it, as earnest, as candid. "I don't think, dear
lady, he's here."

It gave her straightway the measure of the success
she could have as a dove: that was recorded in the
long look of deep criticism, a look without a word,
that Mrs. Lowder poured forth. And the word, pre
sently, bettered it still. "Oh you exquisite thing!"
The luscious innuendo of it, almost startling, lingered
in the room, after the visitors had gone, like an over-
sweet fragrance. But left alone with Mrs. Stringham
Milly continued to breathe it : she studied again the
dovelike and so set her companion to mere rich re
porting that she averted all enquiry into her own case.

That, with the new day, was once more her law —
though she saw before her, of course, as something
of a complication, her need, each time, to decide.
She should have to be clear as to how a dove would
act. She settled it, she thought, well enough this

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morning by quite readopting her plan in respect to
Sir Luke Strett. That, she was pleased to reflect, had
originally been pitched in the key of a merely irides
cent drab; and although Mrs. Stringham, after break
fast, began by staring at it as if it had been a priceless
Persian carpet suddenly unrolled at her feet, she had
no scruple, at the end of five minutes, in leaving her
to make the best of it. "Sir Luke Strett comes, by
appointment, to see me at eleven, but I 'm going out
on purpose. He 's to be told, please, deceptively, that
I'm at home, and you, as my representative, when
he comes up, are to see him instead. He'll like that,
this time, better. So do be nice to him." It had taken,
naturally, more explanation, and the mention, above
all, of the fact that the visitor was the greatest of doc
tors; yet when once the key had been offered Susie
slipped it on her bunch, and her young friend could
again feel her lovely imagination operate. It operated
in truth very much as Mrs. Lowder's, at the last, had
done the night before : it made the air heavy once more
with the extravagance of assent. It might, afresh,
almost have frightened our young woman to see how
people rushed to meet her : had she then so little time
to live that the road must always be spared her ? It
was as if they were helping her to take it out on the
spot. Susie — she could n't deny, and did n't pre
tend to — might, of a truth, on her side, have treated
such news as a flash merely lurid ; as to which, to do
Susie justice, the pain of it was all there. But, none
the less, the margin always allowed her young friend
was all there as well; and the proposal now made her
— what was it in short but Byzantine ? The vision of

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THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

Milly's perception of the propriety of the matter had,
at any rate, quickly engulfed, so far as her attitude
was concerned, any surprise1 and any shock; so that
she only desired, the next thing, perfectly to possess
the facts. Milly could easily speak, on this, as if there
were only one : she made nothing of such another as
that she had felt herself menaced. The great fact, in
fine, was that she knew him to desire just now, more
than anything else, to meet, quite apart, some one
interested in her. Who therefore so interested as her
faithful Susan ? The only other circumstance that,
by the time she had quitted her friend, she had treated
as worth mentioning was the circumstance of her hav
ing at first intended to keep quiet. She had originally
best seen herself as sweetly secretive. As to that she
had changed, and her present request was the result.
She did n't say why she had changed, but she trusted
her faithful Susan. Their visitor would trust her not
less, and she herself would adore their visitor. More
over he would n't — the girl felt sure — tell her any
thing dreadful. The worst would be that rns was in
love and that he needed a confidant to work it. And
now she was going to the National Gallery.

VII

THE idea of the National Gallery had been with her
from the moment of her hearing from Sir Luke Strett
about his hour of coming. It had been in her mind
as a place so meagrely visited, as one of the places
that had seemed at home one of the attractions of
Europe and one of its highest aids to culture, but that
— the old story — the typical frivolous always ended
by sacrificing to vulgar pleasures. She had had per
fectly, at those whimsical moments on the Briinig, the
half-shamed sense of turning her back on such oppor
tunities for real improvement as had figured to her,
from of old, in connexion with the continental tour,
under the general head of "pictures and things"; and
at last she knew for what she had done so. The plea
had been explicit — she had done so for life as op
posed to learning; the upshot of which had been that
life was now beautifully provided for. In spite of those
few dips and dashes into the many-coloured stream of
history for which of late Kate Croy had helped her to
find time, there were possible great chances she had
neglected, possible great moments she should, save
for to-day, have all but missed. She might still, she had
felt, overtake one or two of them among the Titians
and the Turners; she had been honestly nursing the
hour, and, once she was in the benignant halls, her
faith knew itself justified. It was the air she wanted
and the world she would now exclusively choose ; the

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quiet chambers, nobly overwhelming, rich but slightly
veiled, opened out round her and made her presently
say " If I could lose myself here ! " There were peo
ple, people in plenty, but, admirably, no personal
question. It was immense, outside, the personal
question ; but she had blissfully left it outside, and the
nearest it came, for a quarter of an hour, to glimmer
ing again into view was when she watched for a little
one of the more earnest of the lady-copyists. Two or
three in particular, spectacled, aproned, absorbed,
engaged her sympathy to an absurd extent, seemed to
show her for the time the right way to live. She should
have been a lady-copyist — it met so the case. The
case was the case of escape, of living under water, of
being at once impersonal and firm. There it was be
fore one — one had only to stick and stick.

Milly yielded to this charm till she was almost
ashamed ; she watched the lady-copyists till she found
herself wondering what would be thought by others
of a young woman, of adequate aspect, who should
appear to regard them as the pride of the place. She
would have liked to talk to them, to get, as it figured
to her, into their lives, and was deterred but by the
fact that she did n't quite see herself as purchasing
imitations and yet feared she might excite the expecta
tion of purchase. She really knew before long that
what held her was the mere refuge, that something
within her was after all too weak for the Turners and
Titians. They joined hands about her in a circle too
vast, though a circle that a year before she would only
have desired to trace. They were truly for the larger,
not for the smaller life, the life of which the actual

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pitch, for example, was an interest, the interest of com
passion, in misguided efforts. She marked absurdly
her little stations, blinking, in her shrinkage of curi
osity, at the glorious walls, yet keeping an eye on
vistas and approaches, so that she should n't be fla
grantly caught. The vistas and approaches drew her
in this way from room to room, and she had been
through many parts of the show, as she supposed,
when she sat down to rest. There were chairs in scant
clusters, places from which one could gaze. Milly
indeed at present fixed her eyes more than elsewhere
on the appearance, first, that she could n't quite, after
all, have accounted to an examiner for the order of
her "schools," and then on that of her being more tired
than she had meant, in spite of her having been so
much less intelligent. They found, her eyes, it should
be added, other occupation as well, which she let
them freely follow : they rested largely, in her vague
ness, on the vagueness of other visitors ; they attached
themselves in especial, with mixed results, to the sur
prising stream of her compatriots. She was struck
with the circumstance that the great museum, early
in August, was haunted with these pilgrims, as also
with that of her knowing them from afar, marking
them easily, each and all, and recognising not less
promptly that they had ever new lights for her — new
lights on their own darkness. She gave herself up at
last, and it was a consummation like another: what
she should have come to the National Gallery for to
day would] be to watch the copyists and reckon the
Baedekers. That perhaps was the moral of a menaced
state of health — that one would sit in public places

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THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

and count the Americans. It passed the time in a
manner; but it seemed already the second line of de
fence, and this notwithstanding the pattern, so un-
mistakeable, of her country-folk. They were cut out
as by scissors, coloured, labelled, mounted ; but their
relation to her failed to act — they somehow did no
thing for her. Partly, no doubt, they did n't so much
as notice or know her, did n't even recognise their
community of collapse with her, the sign on her, as
she sat there, that for her too Europe was "tough."
It came to her idly thus — for her humour could still
play — that she did n't seem then the same success
with them as with the inhabitants of London, who
had taken her up on scarce more of an acquaintance.
She could wonder if they would be different should
she go back with this glamour attached; and she
could also wonder, if it came to that, whether she
should ever go back. Her friends straggled past, at
any rate, in all the vividness of their absent criticism,
and she had even at last the sense of taking a mean
advantage.

There was a finer instant, however, at which three
ladies, clearly a mother and daughters, had paused
before her under compulsion of a comment apparently
just uttered by one of them and referring to some ob
ject on the other side of the room. Milly had her back
to the object, but her face very much to her young
compatriot, the one who had spoken and in whose
look she perceived a certain gloom of recognition.
Recognition, for that matter, sat confessedly in her
own eyes : she knew the three, generically, as easily as
a school-boy with a crib in his lap would know the

290

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answer in class; she felt, like the school-boy, guilty
enough — questioned, as honour went, as to her right
so to possess, to dispossess, people who had n't con
sciously provoked her. She would have been able to
say where they lived, and also how, had the place and
the way been but amenable to the positive; she bent
tenderly, in imagination, over marital, paternal Mr.
Whatever-he-was, at home, eternally named, with all
the honours and placidities, but eternally unseen and
existing only as some one who could be financially
heard from. The mother, the puffed and composed
whiteness of whose hair had no relation to her ap
parent age, showed a countenance almost chemically
clean and dry; her companions wore an air of vague
resentment humanised by fatigue; and the three were
equally adorned with short cloaks of coloured cloth
surmounted by little tartan hoods. The tartans were
doubtless conceivable as different, but the cloaks,
curiously, only thinkable as one. " Handsome ? Well,
if you choose to say so." It was the mother who
had spoken, who herself added, after a pause during
which Milly took the reference as to a picture: "In
the English style." The three pair of eyes had con
verged, and their possessors had for an instant rested,
with the effect of a drop of the subject, on this last
characterisation — with that, too, of a gloom not less
mute in one of the daughters than murmured in the
other. Milly's heart went out to them while they
turned their backs; she said to herself that they ought
to have known her, that there was something between
them they might have beautifully put together. But
she had lost the m also — they were cold ; they left her

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THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

in her weak wonder as to what they had been looking
at. The "handsome" disposed her to turn — all the
more that the " English style " would be the English
school, which she liked; only she saw, before moving,
by the array on the side facing her, that she was in
fact among small Dutch pictures. The action of this
was again appreciable — the dim surmise that it
would n't then be by a picture that the spring in the
three ladies had been pressed. It was at all events
time she should go, and she turned as she got on her
feet. She had had behind her one of the entrances
and various visitors who had come in while she sat,
visitors single and in pairs — by one of the former of
whom she felt her eyes suddenly held.

This was a gentleman in the middle of the place,
a gentleman who had removed his hat and was for a
moment, while he glanced, absently, as she could see,
at the top tier of the collection, tapping his forehead
with his pocket-handkerchief. The occupation held
him long enough to give Milly time to take for granted
— and a few seconds sufficed — that his face was the
object just observed by her friends. This could only
have been because she concurred in their tribute,
even qualified; and indeed "the English style" of
the gentleman — perhaps by instant contrast to .the
American — was what had had the arresting power.
This arresting power, at the same time — and that
was the marvel — had already sharpened almost to
pain, for in the very act of judging the bared head
with detachment she felt herself shaken by a know
ledge of it. It was Merton Densher's own, and he
was standing there, standing long enough uncon-

292

BOOK FIFTH

scious for her to fix him and then hesitate. These
successions were swift, so that she could still ask her
self in freedom if she had best let him see her. She
could still reply to this that she shouldn't like him to
catch her in the effort to prevent it; and she might
further have decided that he was too preoccupied to
see anything had not a perception intervened that
surpassed the first in violence. She was unable to
think afterwards how long she had looked at him
before knowing herself as otherwise looked at; all she
was coherently to put together was that she had had
a second recognition without his having noticed her.
The source of this latter shock was nobody less than
Kate Croy — Kate Croy who was suddenly also in
the line of vision and whose eyes met her eyes at their
next movement. Kate was but two yards off — Mr.
Densher was n't alone. Kate's face specifically said
so, for after a stare as blank at first as Milly's it broke
into a far smile. That was what, wonderfully — in
addition to the marvel of their meeting — passed
from her for Milly ; the instant reduction to easy terms
of the fact of their being there, the two young women,
together. It was perhaps only afterwards that the girl
fully felt the connexion between this touch and her
already established conviction that Kate was a pro
digious person ; yet on the spot she none the less, in
a degree, knew herself handled and again, as she had
been the night before, dealt with — absolutely even
dealt with for her greater pleasure. A minute in fine
had n't elapsed before Kate had somehow made her
provisionally take everything as natural. The pro
visional was just the charm — acquiring that char-
293

THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

acter from one moment to the other; it represented
happily so much that Kate would explain on the very
first chance. This left moreover — and that was the
greatest wonder — all due margin for amusement at
the way things happened, the monstrous oddity of
their turning up in such a place on the very heels
of their having separated without allusion to it. The
handsome girl was thus literally in control of the
scene by the time Merton Densher was ready to ex
claim with a high flush or a vivid blush — one did n't
distinguish the embarrassment from the joy — "Why
Miss Theale : fancy ! " and "Why Miss Theale : what
luck!"

Miss Theale had meanwhile the sense that for him
too, on Kate's part, something wonderful and un
spoken was determinant; and this although, distinctly,
his companion had no more looked at him with a
hint than he had looked at her with a question. He
had looked and was looking only at Milly herself,
ever so pleasantly and considerately — she scarce
knew what to call it; but without prejudice to her
consciousness, all the same, that women got out of
predicaments better than men. The predicament of
course was n't definite nor phraseable — and the way
they let all phrasing pass was presently to recur to
our young woman as a characteristic triumph of the
civilised state; but she took it for granted, insistently,
with a small private flare of passion, because the one
thing she could think of to do for him was to show
him how she eased him ofF. She would really, tired
and nervous, have been much disconcerted if the op
portunity in question had n't saved her. It was what

294

BOOK FIFTH

had saved her most, what had made her, after the
first few seconds, almost as brave for Kate as Kate
was for her, had made her only ask herself what their
friend would like of her. That he was at the end of
three minutes, without the least complicated refer
ence, so smoothly " their " friend was just the effect of
their all being sublimely civilised. The flash in which
he saw this was, for Milly, fairly inspiring — to that
degree in fact that she was even now, on such a plane,
yearning to be supreme. It took, no doubt, a big dose
of inspiration to treat as not funny — or at least as
not unpleasant — the anomaly, for Kate, that she
knew their gentleman, and for herself, that Kate was
spending the morning with him ; but everything con
tinued to make for this after Milly had tasted of her
draught. She was to wonder in subsequent reflexion
what in the world they had actually said, since they
had made such a success of what they did n't say; the
sweetness of the draught for the time, at any rate,
was to feel success assured. What depended on this
for Mr. Densher was all obscurity to her, and she
perhaps but invented the image of his need as a short
cut to accommodation. Whatever the facts, their
perfect manners, all round, saw them through. The
finest part of Milly's own inspiration, it may further
be mentioned, was the quick perception that what
would be of most service was, so to speak, her own
native wood-note. She had long been conscious with
shame for her thin blood, or at least for her poor econ
omy, of her unused margin as an American girl —
closely indeed as in English air the text might ap
pear to cover the page. She still had reserves of spon-
295

THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

taneity, if not of comicality; so that all this cash in
hand could now find employment. She became as
spontaneous as possible and as American as it might
conveniently appeal to Mr. Densher, after his travels,
to find her. She said things in the air, and yet flattered
herself that she struck him as saying them not in the
tone of agitation but in the tone of New York. In
the tone of New Yorl^ agitation was beautifully dis
counted, and she had now a sufficient view of how
much it might accordingly help her.

The help was fairly rendered before they left the
place; when her friends presently accepted her in
vitation to adjourn with her to luncheon at her hotel
it was in Fifth Avenue that the meal might have
waited. Kate had never been there so straight, but
Milly was at present taking her; and if Mr. Densher
had been he had at least never had to come so fast.
She proposed it as the natural thing — proposed it
as the American girl; and she saw herself quickly
justified by the pace at which she was followed. The
beauty of the case was that to do it all she had only to
appear to take Kate's hint. This had said in its fine
first smile "Oh yes, our look's queer — but give me
time"; and the American girl could give time as no
body else could. What Milly thus gave she therefore
made them take — even if, as they might surmise, it
was rather more than they wanted. In the porch of
the museum she expressed her preference for a four-
wheeler; they would take their course in that guise
precisely to multiply the minutes. She was more than
ever justified by the positive charm that her spirit
imparted even to their use of this conveyance; and she

296

BOOK FIFTH

touched her highest point — that is certainly for her
self — as she ushered her companions into the pre
sence of Susie. Susie was there with luncheon as well
as with her return in prospect; and nothing could
now have filled her own consciousness more to the
brim than to see this good friend take in how little she
was abjectly anxious. The cup itself actually offered
to this good friend might in truth well be startling,
for it was composed beyond question of ingredients
oddly mixed. She caught Susie fairly looking at her
as if to know whether she had brought in guests to
hear Sir Luke Strett's report. Well, it was better her
companion should have too much than too little to
wonder about; she had come out "anyway," as they
said at home, for the interest of the thing; and interest
truly sat in her eyes. Milly was none the less, at the
sharpest crisis, a little sorry for her; she could of neces
sity extract from the odd scene so comparatively little
of a soothing secret. She saw Mr. Dens her suddenly
popping up, but she saw nothing else that had hap
pened. She saw in the same way her young friend
indifferent to her young friend's doom, and she lacked
what would explain it. The only thing to keep her in
patience was the way, after luncheon, Kate almost, as
might be said, made up to her. This was actually
perhaps as well what most kept Milly herself in pa
tience. It had in fact for our young woman a positive
beauty — was so marked as a deviation from the
handsome girl's previous courses. Susie had been a
bore to the handsome girl, and the change was now
suggestive. The two sat together, after they had risen
from table, in the apartment in which they had

297

THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

lunched, making it thus easy for the other guest and
his entertainer to sit in the room adjacent. This, for
the latter personage, was the beauty; it was almost,
on Kate's part, like a prayer to be relieved. If she
honestly liked better to be "thrown with" Susan
Shepherd than with their other friend, why that said
practically everything. It did n't perhaps altogether
say why she had gone out with him for the morning,
but it said, as one thought, about as much as she
could say to his face.

Little by little indeed, under the vividness of Kate's
behaviour, the probabilities fell back into their order.
Merton Densher was in love and Kate could n't help
it — could only be sorry and kind : would n't that,
without wild flurries, cover everything ? Milly at all
events tried it as a cover, tried it hard, for the time;
pulled it over her, in the front, the larger room, drew
it up to her chin with energy. If it did n't, so treated,
do everything for her, it did so much that she could
herself supply the rest. She made that up by the in
terest of her great question, the question of whether,
seeing him once more, with all that, as she called it to
herself, had come and gone, her impression of him
would be different from the impression received in
New York. That had held her from the moment of
their leaving the museum; it kept her company
through their drive and during luncheon; and now
that she was a quarter of an hour alone with him it
became acute. She was to feel at this crisis that no
clear, no common answer, no direct satisfaction on
this point, was to reach her; she was to see her ques
tion itself simply go to pieces. She could n't tell if he

298

BOOK FIFTH

were different or not, and she did n't know nor care
if she were : these things had ceased to matter in the
light of the only thing she did know. This was that
she liked him, as she put it to herself, as much as ever;
and if that were to amount to liking a new person the
amusement would be but the greater. She had
thought him at first very quiet, in spite of his recovery
from his original confusion; though even the shade
of bewilderment, she yet perceived, had not been due
to such vagueness on the subject of her reintensified
identity as the probable sight, over there, of many
thousands of her kind would sufficiently have justi
fied. No, he was quiet, inevitably, for the first half of
the time, because Milly's own lively line — the line
of spontaneity — made everything else relative; and
because too, so far as Kate was spontaneous, it was
ever so finely in the air among them that the normal
pitch must be kept. Afterwards, when they had got
a little more used, as it were, to each other's separate
felicity, he had begun to talk more, clearly bethinking
himself at a given moment of what bis natural lively
line would be. It would be to take for granted she
must wish to hear of the States, and to give her in its
order everything he had seen and done there. He
abounded, of a sudden — he almost insisted ; he re
turned, after breaks, to the charge ; and the effect was
perhaps the more odd as he gave no clue whatever to
what he had admired, as he went, or to what he
had n't. He simply drenched her with his sociable
story — especially during the time they were away
from the others. She had stopped then being Ameri
can — all to let him be English ; a permission of which

299

THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

he took, she could feel, both immense and uncon
scious advantage. She had really never cared less for
the States than at this moment; but that had nothing
to do with the matter. It would have been the occa
sion of her life to learn about them, for nothing could
put him off, and he ventured on no reference to what
had happened for herself. It might have been almost
as if he had known that the greatest of all these ad
ventures was her doing just what she did then.

It was at this point that she saw the smash of her
great question complete, saw that all she had to do
with was the sense of being there with him. And
there was no chill for this in what she also presently
saw — that, however he had begun, he was now act
ing from a particular desire, determined either by new
facts or new fancies, to be like every one else, sim-
plifyingly "kind" to her. He had caught on already
as to manner — fallen into line with every one else;
and if his spirits verily bad gone up it might well be
that he had thus felt himself lighting on the remedy
for all awkwardness. Whatever he did or he did n't
Milly knew she should still like him — there was no
alternative to that; but her heart could none the less
sink a little on feeling how much his view of her was
destined to have in common with — as she now sighed
over it — the view. She could have dreamed of his
not having the view, of his having something or other,
if need be quite viewless, of his own ; but he might
have what he could with least trouble, and the view
would n't be after all a positive bar to her seeing
him. The defect of it in general — if she might so un
graciously criticise — was that, by its sweet universal-

300

BOOK FIFTH

ity, it made relations rather prosaically a matter of
course. It anticipated and superseded the — likewise
sweet — operation of real affinities. It was this that
was doubtless marked in her power to keep him now
— this and her glassy lustre of attention to his pleas
antness about the scenery in the Rockies. She was in
truth a little measuring her success in detaining him
by Kate's success in "standing" Susan. It would n't
be, if she could help it, Mr. Densher who should first
break down. Such at least was one of the forms of
the girl's inward tension ; but beneath even this deep
reason was a motive still finer. What she had left at
home on going out to give it a chance was meanwhile
still, was more sharply and actively, there. What had
been at the top of her mind about it and then been
violently pushed down — this quantity was again
working up. As soon as their friends should go Susie
would break out, and what she would break out upon
would n't be — interested in that gentleman as she
had more than once shown herself — the personal
fact of Mr. Densher. Milly had found in her face at
luncheon a feverish glitter, and it told what she was
full of. She did n't care now for Mr. Densher's per
sonal facts. Mr. Densher had risen before her only
to find his proper place in her imagination already of
a sudden occupied. His personal fact failed, so far as
she was concerned, to be personal, and her companion
noticed the failure. This could only mean that she was
full to the brim of Sir Luke Strett and of what she had
had from him. What had she had from him ? It was
indeed now working upward again that Milly would
do well to know, though knowledge looked stiff in the

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THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

light of Susie's glitter. It was therefore on the whole
because Densher's young hostess was divided from it
by so thin a partition that she continued to cling to
the Rockies.

END OF VOLUME I

<£fec fctoertfbe press

CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS
U . S . A

fj.

PS

2116
W5

1909
v.l

James, Henry

The wings of the dove'